JOURNEYS  To  BAGDAD 


JOURNEYS 
To  BAG  DAD 

BY  CHARLES 
S-  B  HGD  KS 

ILLUSTRATED  WITH 
ORIGINAL  WcPD-CUTS 
BY  ALLEN 
LEWIS' 


YALE  UNIVERSITY   PRESS 

NEW  HAVEN  CONNECTICUT 

M  D   CCCC  XV 


COPYRIGHT,  1915,  BY 
YALE  UNIVERSITY  PRESS. 


First  printing,  November,  1915. 
Second  printing,  December,  1915. 

Third  printing,  June,  1916. 
Fourth  printing,  February,  1920. 


-FGH  k 


PUBLISHERS'  NOTE 

The  Yale  University  Press  makes  grateful  acknowledgment 
to  the  Editors  of  The  Yale  Review  and  of  The  New  Republic  for 
permission  to  include  in  the  present  work  essays  of  which  they 
were  the  original  publishers. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.     Journeys  to  Bagdad                                             ;.  1 

II.     The  Worst  Edition  of  Shakespeare       .          .  23 

III.  The  Decline  of  Night-Caps            .          .           .  43 

IV.  Maps  and  Rabbit-Holes      .          .          .          .  55 
V.     Tunes  for  Spring       .          .          .          .           .  69 

VI.     Respectfully  Submitted — To  a  Mournful  Air  .  83 

VII.     The  Chilly  Presence  of  Hard-headed  Persons  .  91 

VIII.     Hoopskirts  and  Other  Lively  Matter     .          .  101 

IX.     On  Traveling    .           .           .                      ;           .  115 

X.     Through  the  Scuttle  with  the  Tinman  .           .  125 


JOURNEYS  To  BAGDAD 


JOURNEYS  To  BAGDAD 

Are  you  of  that  elect  who,  at  certain  seasons  of 
the  year — perhaps  in  March  when  there  is  timid 
promise  of  the  spring  or  in  the  days  of  October  when 
there  are  winds  across  the  earth  and  gorgeous  panic 
of  fallen  leaves — are  you  of  that  elect  who,  on  such 
occasion  or  any  occasion  else,  feel  stirrings  in  you  to 
be  quit  of  whatever  prosy  work  is  yours,  to  throw 
down  your  book  or  ledger,  or  your  measuring  tape — 
if  such  device  marks  your  service — and  to  go  forth 
into  the  world? 

I  do  count  myself  of  this  elect.  And  I  will  name 
such  stimuli  as  most  set  these  stirrings  in  me.  And 
first  of  all  there  is  a  smell  compounded  out  of  hemp 
and  tar  that  works  pleasantly  to  my  undoing.  Now 


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


it  happens  that  there  is  in  this  city,  down  by  the  river 
where  it  flows  black  with  city  stain  as  though  the  toes 
of  commerce  had  been  washed  therein,  a  certain  ship 
chandlery.  It  is  filthy  coming  on  the  place,  for  there 
is  reek  from  the  river  and  staleness  from  the  shops — 
ancient  whiffs  no  wise  enfeebled  by  their  longevity, 
Nestors  of  their  race  with  span  of  seventy  lusty 
summers.  But  these  smells  do  not  prevail  within  the 
chandlery.  At  first  you  see  nothing  but  rope. 
Besides  clothesline  and  other  such  familiar  and 
domestic  twistings,  there  are  great  cordages  scarce 
kinsmen  to  them,  which  will  later  put  to  sea  and  will 
whistle  with  shrill  enjoyment  at  their  release.  There 
are  such  hooks,  swivels,  blocks  and  tackles,  such 
confusion  of  ships'  devices  as  would  be  enough  for 
the  building  of  a  sea  tale.  It  may  be  fancied  that 
here  is  Treasure  Island  itself,  shuffled  and  laid  apart 
in  bits  like  a  puzzle-picture.  (For  genius,  maybe, 
is  but  a  nimbleness  of  collocation  of  such  hitherto 
unconsidered  trifles.)  Then  you  will  go  aloft  where 
sails  are  made,  with  sailormen  squatting  about, 
bronzed  fellows,  rheumatic,  all  with  pipes.  And 
through  all  this  shop  is  the  smell  of  hemp  and  tar. 

In  finer  matters  I  have  no  nose.  It  is  ridiculous, 
really,  that  this  very  messenger  and  forerunner  of 
myself,  this  trumpeter  of  my  coming,  this  bi-nasal 
fellow  in  the  crow's-nest,  should  be  so  deficient.  If 


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


smells  were  bears,  how  often  I  would  be  bit!  My 
nose  may  serve  by  way  of  ornament  or  for  the  sniffing 
of  the  heavier  odors,  yet  will  fail  in  the  nice  detection 
of  the  fainter  waftings  and  olfactory  ticklings.  Yet 
how  will  it  dilate  on  the  Odyssean  smell  of  hemp  and 
tar!  And  I  have  no  explanation  of  this,  for  I  am 
no  sailor.  Indeed,  at  sea  I  am  misery  itself  when 
ever  perchance  "the  ship  goes  wop  (with  a  wiggle 
between)."  Such  wistful  glances  have  I  cast  upon 
the  wide  freedom  of  the  decks  when  I  leave  them  on 
the  perilous  adventure  of  dinner!  So  this  relish  of 
hemp  and  tar  must  be  a  legacy  from  a  far-off  time — 
a  dim  atavism,  to  put  it  as  hard  as  possible — for  I 
seem  to  remember  being  told  that  my  ancestors  were 
once  engaged  in  buccaneering  or  other  valiant  liveli 
hood. 

But  here  is  a  peculiar  thing.  The  chandlery  gives 
me  no  desire  to  run  away  to  sea.  Rather,  the  smell 
of  the  place  urges  me  indeterminately,  diffusedly,  to 
truantry.  It  offers  me  no  particular  chart.  It  but 
cuts  my  moorings  for  whatever  winds  are  blowing. 
If  there  be  blood  of  a  pirate  in  me,  it  is  a  shame  what 
faded  juice  it  is.  It  would  flow  pink  on  the  sticking. 
In  mean  contrast  to  skulls,  bowie-knives  and  other 
red  villainy,  my  thoughts  will  be  set  toward  the  mild 
truantry  of  trudging  for  an  afternoon  in  the  country. 
Or  it  is  likely  that  I'll  carry  stones  for  the  castle  that 


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


I  have  been  this  long  time  building.    Were  the  trick 
of  prosody  in  me,  I  would  hew  a  poem  on  the  spot. 


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


Such  is  my  anemia.  And  yet  there  is  a  touch  of 
valiancy,  too,  as  from  the  days  when  my  sainted 
ancestors  sailed  with  their  glass  beads  from  Bristol 
harbor;  the  desire  of  visiting  the  sunset,  of  sailing 
down  on  the  far  side  of  the  last  horizon  where  the 
world  itself  falls  off  and  there  is  sky  with  swirl  of 
stars  beyond. 

In  the  spring  of  each  year  everyone  should  go  to 
Bagdad — not  particularly  to  Bagdad,  for  I  shall  not 
dictate  in  matter  of  detail — but  to  any  such  town  that 
may  happen  to  be  so  remote  that  you  are  not  sure 
when  you  look  it  up  whether  it  is  on  page  47  which 
is  Asia,  or  on  page  53  which  is  Persia.  But  Bagdad 
will  serve:  For  surely,  Reader,  you  have  not  for 
gotten  that  it  was  in  Bagdad  in  the  surprising  reign 
of  Haroun-al-Raschid  that  Sinbad  the  Sailor  lived! 
Nor  can  it  have  escaped  you  that  scarce  a  mule's 
back  distance — such  was  the  method  of  computation 
in  those  golden  days — lived  that  prince  of  medieval 
plain-clothes  men,  Ali  Baba! 

Historically,  Bagdad  lies  in  that  tract  of  earth 
where  purple  darkens  into  night.  Geographically, 
it  lies  obliquely  downward,  and  is,  I  compute,  consid 
erably  off  the  southeast  corner  of  my  basement.  It 
is  such  distant  proximity,  doubtless,  that  renders  my 
basement — and  particularly  its  woodpile,  which  lies 
obscurely  beyond  the  laundry — such  a  shadowy,  grim 


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


and  altogether  mysterious  place.  If  there  be  any 
part  of  the  house,  including  certain  dark  corners  of 
the  attic,  that  is  fearfully  Mesopotamian  after  night 
fall,  it  is  that  woodpile.  Even  when  I  sit  above, 
secure  with  lights,  if  by  chance  I  hear  tappings  from 
below — such  noises  are  common  on  a  windy  night — 
I  know  that  it  is  the  African  Magician  pounding  for 
the  genie,  the  sound  echoing  through  the  hollow  earth. 
It  is  matter  of  doubt  whether  the  iron  bars  so  usual 
on  basement  windows  serve  chiefly  to  keep  burglars 
out,  or  whether  their  greater  service  is  not  their 
defense  of  western  Christianity  against  the  invasion 
from  the  East  which,  except  for  these  bars,  would 
enter  here  as  by  a  postern.  At  a  hazard,  my  suspicion 
would  fall  on  the  iron  doors  that  open  inwards  in  the 
base  of  chimneys.  We  have  been  fondly  credulous 
that  there  is  nothing  but  ash  inside  and  mere  siftings 
from  the  fire  above;  and  when,  on  an  occasion,  we 
reach  in  with  a  trowel  for  a  scoop  of  this  wood-ash 
for  our  roses,  we  laugh  at  ourselves  for  our  scare  of 
being  nabbed.  But  some  day  if  by  way  of  experiment 
you  will  thrust  your  head  within — it's  a  small  hole  and 
you  will  be  besmirched  beyond  anything  but  a  Satur 
day's  reckoning — you  will  see  that  the  pit  goes  off  in 
darkness — downward.  It  was  but  the  other  evening 
as  we  were  seated  about  the  fire  that  there  came 
upward  from  the  basement  a  gibbering  squeak.  Then 


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


the  woodpile  fell  over,  for  so  we  judged  the  clatter. 
Is  it  fantastic  to  think  that  some  dark  and  muffled 
Persian,  after  his  dingy  tunneling  from  the  banks  of 
the  Tigris,  had  climbed  the  pile  of  wood  for  a  breath 
of  night  at  the  window  and,  his  foot  slipping,  the  pile 
fell  over?  Plainly,  we  heard  him  scuttling  back  to 
the  ash-pit. 

Be  these  things  as  they  may,  when  you  have 
arrived  in  Bagdad — and  it  is  best  that  you  travel  over 
land  and  sea — if  you  be  serious  in  your  zest,  you  will 
not  be  satisfied,  but  will  journey  a  thousand  miles 
more  at  the  very  least,  in  whatever  direction  is 
steepest.  And  you  will  turn  the  flanks  of  seven 
mountains,  with  seven  villainous  peaks  thereon.  For 
the  very  number  of  them  will  put  a  spell  on  you. 
And  you  will  cross  running  water,  that  you  leave  no 
scent  for  the  world  behind.  Such  journey  would  be 
the  soul  of  truantry  and  you  should  set  out  upon  the 
road  every  spring  when  the  wind  comes  warm. 

Now  the  medieval  pilgrimage  in  its  day,  as  you 
very  well  know,  was  a  most  popular  institution.  And 
the  reasons  are  as  plentiful  as  blackberries.  But  in 
the  first  place  and  foremost,  it  came  always  in  the 
spring.  It  was  like  a  tonic,  iron  for  the  blood. 
There  were  many  men  who  were  not  a  bit  pious,  who, 
on  the  first  warm  day  when  customers  were  scarce, 
yawned  themselves  into  a  prodigious  holiness.  Who, 


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


indeed,  would  resign  himself  to  changing  moneys  or 
selling  doves  upon  the  Temple  steps  when  such 
appeal  was  in  the  air?  What  cobbler  even,  bent  upon 
his  leather,  whose  soul  would  not  mount  upon  such 
a  summons?  Who  was  it  preached  the  first  crusade? 
There  was  no  marvel  in  the  business.  Did  he  come 
down  our  street  now  that  April's  here,  he  would  win 
recruits  from  every  house.  I  myself  would  care  little 
whether  he  were  Christian  or  Mohammedan  if  only 
the  shrine  lay  over-seas  and  deep  within  the  twistings 
of  the  mountains. 

If,  however,  your  truantry  is  domestic,  and  the 
scope  of  the  seven  seas  with  glimpse  of  Bagdad  is 
too  broad  for  your  desire,  then  your  yearning  may 
direct  itself  to  the  spaces  just  outside  your  own  town. 
If  such  myopic  truantry  is  in  you,  there  is  much  to 
be  said  for  going  afoot.  In  these  days  when  motors 
are  as  plentiful  as  mortgages  this  may  appear  but 
discontented  destitution,  the  cry  of  sour  grapes.  And 
yet  much  of  the  adventuring  of  life  has  been  gained 
afoot.  But  walking  now  has  fallen  on  evil  days. 
It  needs  but  an  enlistment  of  words  to  show  its 
decadence.  Tramp  is  such  a  word.  Time  was  when 
it  signified  a  straight  back  and  muscular  calves  and 
an  appetite,  and  at  nightfall,  maybe,  pleasant  gossip 
at  the  hearth  on  the  affairs  of  distant  villages.  There 
was  rhythm  in  the  sound.  But  now  it  means  a  loafer, 

10 — 


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


a  shuffler,  a  wilted  rascal.  It  is  patched,  dingy,  out- 
at-elbows.  Take  the  word  vagabond!  It  ought  to 
be  of  innocent  repute,  for  it  is  built  solely  from  stuff 
that  means  to  wander,  and  wandering  since  the  days 
of  Moses  has  been  practiced  by  the  most  respectable 
persons.  Yet  Noah  Webster,  a  most  disinterested 
old  gentleman,  makes  it  clear  that  a  vagabond  is  a 
vicious  scamp  who  deserves  no  better  than  the  lockup. 


Doubtless  Webster,  if  at  home,  would  loose  his  dog 
did  such  a  one  appear.  A  wayfarer,  also,  in  former 
times  was  but  a  goer  of  ways,  a  man  afoot,  whether 
on  pilgrimage  or  itinerant  with  his  wares  and  cart 
and  bell.  Does  the  word  riot  recall  the  poetry  of  the 
older  road,  the  jogging  horse,  the  bush  of  the  tavern, 
the  crowd  about  the  peddler's  pack,  the  musician 


11 


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


piping  to  the  open  window,  or  the  shrine  in  the 
hollow?  Or  maybe  it  summons  to  you  a  decked  and 
painted  Cambyses  bellowing  his  wrath  to  an  inn-yard. 


One  would  think  that  the  inventor  of  these  scandals 
was  a  crutched  and  limping  fellow,  who  being  himself 
stunted  and  dwarfed  below  the  waist  was  trying  to 
sneer  into  disuse  all  walking  the  world  over,  or  one 


12 


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


who  was  paunched  by  fat  living  beyond  carrying 
power,  larding  the  lean  earth,  fearing  lest  he  sweat 
himself  to  death,  some  Falstaff  who  unbuttons  him 
after  supper  and  sleeps  on  benches  after  noon. 
Rather  these  words  should  connote  the  strong,  the 
self-reliant,  the  youthful.  He  is  a  tramp,  we  should 
say,  who  relies  most  on  his  own  legs  and  resources, 
who  least  cushions  himself  daintily  against  jar  in  his 
neighbor's  tonneau,  whose  eye  shines  out  seldomest 
from  the  curb  for  a  lift.  The  wayfarer  must  go  forth 
in  the  open  air.  He  must  seek  hilltop  and  wind. 
He  must  gather  the  dust  of  counties.  His  prospects 
must  be  of  broad  fields  and  the  smoking  chimneys 
of  supper. 

But  the  goer  afoot  must  not  be  conceived  as 
primarily  an  engine  of  muscle.  He  is  the  best  walker 
who  keeps  most  widely  awake  in  his  five  senses.  Some 
men  might  as  well  walk  through  a  railway  tunnel. 
They  are  so  concerned  with  the  getting  there  that  a 
black  night  hangs  over  them.  They  plunge  forward 
with  their  heads  down  as  though  they  came  of  an 
antique  race  of  road  builders.  Should  there  be  mile- 
posts  they  are  busied  with  them  only,  and  they  will 
draw  dials  from  their  pokes  to  time  themselves.  I 
fell  into  this  iniquity  on  a  walk  in  Wales  from  Bala 
to  Dolgelley.  Although  I  set  out  leisurely  enough, 
with  an  eye  for  the  lake  and  hills,  before  many  hours 

13  


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


had  elapsed  I  had  acquired  the  milepost  habit  and 
walked  as  if  for  a  wager.  I  covered  the  last  twenty 
miles  in  less  than  five  hours,  and  when  the  brown 
stone  village  came  in  sight  and  I  had  thumped  down 
the  last  hill  and  over  the  peaked  bridge,  I  was  a 
dilapidated  and  foot-sore  vagrant  and  nothing  more. 
To  this  day  Wales  for  me  is  the  land  where  one's  feet 
have  the  ugly  habit  of  foregathering  in  the  end  of 
the  shoes. 

Worse  still  than  the  athletic  walker  is  he  who  takes 
Dame  Care  out  for  a  stroll.  He  forever  runs  his 
machinery,  plans  his  business  ventures  and  introduces 
his  warehouse  to  the  countryside. 

Nor  must  walking  be  conceived  as  merely  a  means 
of  resting.  One  should  set  out  refreshed  and  for  this 
reason  morning  is  the  best  time.  Yours  must  be  an 
exultant  mood.  "Full  many  a  glorious  morning 
have  I  seen  flatter  the  mountain-tops  with  sovereign 
eye."  Your  brain  is  off  at  a  speed  that  was  impossible 
in  your  lack-luster  days.  You  have  a  flow  of  thoughts 
instead  of  the  miserable  trickle  that  ordinarily  serves 
your  business  purposes  and  keeps  you  from  under 
the  trolley  cars. 

But  all  truantry  is  not  in  the  open  air.  I  know  a 
man  who  while  it  is  yet  winter  will  get  out  his  rods 
and  fit  them  together  as  he  sits  before  the  fire.  Then 
he  will  swing  his  arm  forward  from  the  elbow.  The 


H 


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


table  has  become  his  covert  and  the  rug  beyond  is 
his  pool.  And  sometimes  even  when  the  rod  is  not 
in  his  hand  he  will  make  the  motion  forward  from 
the  elbow  and  will  drop  his  thumb.  It  will  show  that 
he  has  jumped  the  seasons  and  that  he  stands  to  his 
knees  in  an  August  stream. 

It  was  but  yesterday  on  my  return  from  work  that 
I  witnessed  a  sight  that  moved  me  pleasantly  to 
thoughts  of  truantry.  Now,  in  all  points  a  grocer's 
wagon  is  staid  and  respectable.  Indeed,  in  its  adher 
ence  to  the  business  of  the  hour  we  might  use  it  as 
a  pattern.  For  six  days  in  the  week  it  concerns  itself 
solely  with  its  errands  of  mercy — such  "whoas"  and 
running  up  the  kitchen  steps  with  baskets  of  pota 
toes — such  poundings  on  the  door — such  golden 
wealth  of  melons  as  it  dispenses.  Though  there 
may  be  a  kind  of  gayety  in  this,  yet  I'll  hazard 
that  in  the  whole  range  of  quadricycle  life  no 
vehicle  is  more  free  from  any  taint  of  riotous  conduct. 
Mark  how  it  keeps  its  Sabbath  in  the  shed!  Yet 
here  was  this  sturdy  Puritan  tied  by  a  rope  to  a 
motor-car  and  fairly  bounding  down  the  street.  It 
was  a  worse  breach  than  when  Noah  was  drunk 
within  his  tent.  Was  it  an  instance  of  falling  into 
bad  company?  It  was  Nym,  you  remember,  who  set 
Master  Slender  on  to  drinking.  "And  I  be  drunk 
again,"  quoth  he,  "I'll  be  drunk  with  those  that  have 


15 


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


the  fear  of  God,  and  not  with  drunken  knaves."  Or 
rather  did  not  every  separate  squeak  of  the  grocer's 
wagon  cry  out  a  truant  disposition?  After  years  of 
repression  here  was  its  chance  at  last.  And  with  what 
a  joyous  rollic,  with  what  a  lively  clatter,  with  what  a 
hilarious  reeling,  as  though  in  gay  defiance  of  the 
law  of  gravity,  was  it  using  its  liberty!  Had  it  been 
a  hearse  in  a  runaway,  the  comedy  would  not  have 
been  better.  If  I  had  been  younger  I  would  have 
pelted  after  and  climbed  in  over  the  tailboard  to 
share  the  reckless  pitch  of  its  enfranchisement. 

Then  there  is  a  truantry  that  I  mention  with 
hesitation,  for  it  comes  close  to  the  heart  of  my  desire, 
and  in  such  matter  particularly  I  would  not  wish  to 
appear  a  fool  to  my  fellows.  The  child  has  this 
truantry  when  he  plays  at  Indian,  for  he  fashions  the 
universe  to  his  desires.  But  some  men  too  can  lift 
themselves,  though  theirs  is  an  intellectual  boot 
strap,  into  a  life  that  moves  above  these  denser  airs. 
Theirs  is  an  intensity  that  goes  deeper  than  day 
dreaming,  although  it  admits  distant  kinship. 
Through  what  twilight  and  shadows  do  such  men 
climb  until  night  and  star-dust  are  about  them! 
Theirs  is  the  dizzy  exaltation  of  him  who  mounts 
above  the  world.  Alas,  in  me  is  no  such  unfathom 
able  mystery.  I  but  trick  myself.  Yet  I  have  my 
moments.  These  stones  that  I  carry  on  the  mountain, 

16 


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


what  of  them?  On  what  windy  ridge  do  I  build  my 
castle?  It  is  shrill  and  bleak,  they  say,  on  the  top 
most  peaks  of  the  Delectable  Mountains,  so  lower 
down  I  have  reared  its  walls.  There  is  no  storm  in 
these  upland  valleys  and  the  sun  sits  pleasantly  on 
their  southern  slopes.  But  even  if  there  be  unfolded 
no  broad  prospect  from  the  devil  to  the  sunrise,  there 
are  pleasant  cottages  in  sight  and  the  smoke  of  many 
suppers  curling  up. 

If  you  happened  to  have  been  a  freshman  at  Yale 
some  eighteen  years  ago  and  were  at  all  addicted  to 
canoeing  on  Lake  Whitney,  and  if,  moreover,  on 
coming  off  the  lake  there  burned  in  you  a  thirst  for 
ginger-beer — as  is  common  in  the  gullet  of  a  fresh 
man — doubtless  you  have  gone  from  the  boathouse 
to  a  certain  little  white  building  across  the  road  to 
gratify  your  hot  desires.  When  you  opened  the  door, 
your  contemptible  person — I  speak  with  the  vocabu 
lary  of  a  sophomore — is  proclaimed  to  all  within  by 
the  jangling  of  a  bell.  After  due  interval  wherein 
you  busy  yourself  in  an  inspection  of  the  cakes  and 
buns  that  beam  upon  you  from  a  show-case — your 
nose  meanwhile  being  pressed  close  against  the  glass 
for  any  slight  blemish  that  might  deflect  your  decision 
(for  a  currant  in  the  dough  often  raises  an  unsavory 
suspicion  and  you'll  squint  to  make  the  matter 
sure) — there  will  appear  through  a  back  door  a  little 

17  


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


old  man  to  minister  unto  you.  You  will  give  no  great 
time  to  the  naming  of  your  drink — for  the  fires  are 
hot  in  you — but  will  take  your  bottle  to  a  table.  The 
braver  spirits  among  you  will  scorn  glasses  as 
effeminate  and  will  gulp  the  liquor  straight  from  the 
bottle  with  what  wickedest  bravado  you  can  muster. 

Now  it  is  likely  that  you  have  done  this  with  a 
swagger  and  have  called  your  servitor  "old  top"  or 
other  playful  name.  Mark  your  mistake !  You  were 
in  the  presence,  if  you  but  knew  it,  of  a  real  author, 
not  a  tyro  fumbling  for  self-expression,  but  a  man 
with  thirty  serials  to  his  credit.  Shall  I  name  the 
periodical?  It  was  the  Golden  Hours,  I  think. 
Ginger-beer  and  jangling  bells  were  but  a  fringe 
upon  his  darker  purpose.  His  desk  was  somewhere 
in  the  back  of  the  house,  and  there  he  would  rise  to 
all  the  fury  of  a  South-Sea  wreck — for  his  genius  lay 
in  the  broader  effects.  Even  while  we  simpletons 
jested  feebly  and  practiced  drinking  with  the  open 
throat — which  we  esteemed  would  be  of  service  when 
we  had  progressed  to  the  heavier  art  of  drinking  real 
beer — even  as  we  munched  upon  his  ginger  cakes,  he 
had  left  us  and  was  exterminating  an  army  corps  in 
the  back  room.  He  was  a  little  man,  pale  and 
stooped,  but  with  a  genius  for  truantry — a  pilgrim 
of  the  Bagdad  road. 

But  we  move  on  too  high  a  plane.    Most  of  us  are 


18 


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


admitted  into  truantry  by  the  accidents,  merely,  of 
our  senses.  By  way  of  instance,  the  sniff  of  a  rotten 
apple  will  set  a  man  off  as  on  seven-league  hoots  to 
the  valleys  of  his  childhood.  The  dry  rustling  of 
November  leaves  re-lights  the  fires  of  youth.  It 
was  only  this  afternoon  that  so  slight  a  circumstance 
as  a  ray  of  light  flashing  in  my  eye  provided  me  an 
agreeable  and  unexpected  truantry.  It  sent  me 
climbing  the  mountains  of  the  North  and  in  no  less 
company  than  that  of  Brunhilda  and  a  troop  of 
Valkyrs. 

It  is  likely  enough  that  none  of  you  have  heard  of 
Long  Street.  As  far  as  I  am  aware  it  is  not  known 
to  general  fame.  It  is  typically  a  back  street  of  the 
business  of  a  city,  that  is,  the  ventages  of  its  buildings 
are  darkened  most  often  by  packing  cases  and  bales. 
Behind  these  ventages  are  metal  shoots.  To  one 
uninitiated  in  the  ways  of  commerce  it  would  appear 
that  these  openings  were  patterned  for  the  multiform 
enactment  of  an  Amy  Robsart  tragedy,  with  such 
devilish  deceit  are  the  shoots  laid  up  against  the  open 
ings.  First  the  teamster  teeters  and  cajoles  the  box 
to  the  edge  of  the  dray,  then,  with  a  sudden  push, 
he  throws  it  off  down  the  shoot,  from  which  it  dis 
appears  with  a  booming  sound.  As  I  recall  it  was 
by  some  such  treachery  that  Amy  Robsart  met  her 
death.  Be  that  as  it  may,  all  day  long  great  drays 


19 


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


go  by  with  Earls  of  Leicester  on  their  lofty  seats, 
prevailing  on  their  horses  with  stout,  Elizabethan 
language.  If  there  comes  a  tangle  in  the  traffic  it 
is  then  especially  that  you  will  hear  a  largeness  of 
speech  as  of  spacious  and  heroic  days. 

During  the  meaner  hours  of  daylight  it  is  my 
privilege  to  occupy  a  desk  and  chair  at  a  window  that 
overlooks  this  street.  Of  the  details  of  my  activity 
I  shall  make  no  mention,  such  level  being  far  below 
the  flight  of  these  enfranchised  hours  of  night  wherein 
I  write.  But  in  the  pauses  of  this  activity  I  see  below 
me  wagon  loads  of  nails  go  by  and  wagon  loads  of 
hammers  hard  after,  to  get  a  crack  at  them.  Then 
there  will  be  a  truck  of  saws,  as  though  the  planking 
of  the  world  yearned  toward  amputation.  Or  maybe, 
at  a  guess,  ten  thousand  rat-traps  will  move  on  down 
the  street.  It's  sure  they  take  us  for  Hamelin  Town, 
and  are  eager  to  lay  their  ambushment.  There  is 
something  rather  stirring  in  such  prodigious  marshal 
ing,  but  I  hear  you  ask  what  this  has  to  do  with 
truantry. 

It  was  near  quitting  time  yesterday  that  a  dray 
was  discharging  cases  down  a  shoot.  These  cases 
were  secured  with  metal  reinforcement,  and  this  metal 
being  rubbed  bright  happened  to  catch  a  ray  of  the 
sun  at  such  an  angle  that  it  was  reflected  in  my  eye. 
This  flash,  which  was  like  lightning  in  its  intensity, 


20 


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


together  with  the  roar  of  the  falling  case,  transported 
me — it's  monstrous  what  jumps  we  take  when  the  fit 
is  on  us — to  the  slopes  of  dim  mountains  in  the  night, 
to  the  heights  above  Valhalla  with  the  flash  of  Valkyrs 
descending.  And  the  booming  of  the  case  upon  the 
slide — God  pity  me — was  the  music.  It  was  thus  that 
I  was  sent  aloft  upon  the  mountains  of  the  North, 
into  the  glare  of  lightning,  with  the  cry  of  Valkyrs 
above  the  storm.  .  .  . 

But  presently  there  was  a  voice  from  the  street. 
"It's  the  last  case  to-night,  Sam,  you  lunk-head.  It's 
quitting  time." 

The  light  fades  on  Long  Street.  The  drays  have 
gone  home.  The  Earls  of  Leicester  drowse  in  their 
own  kitchens,  or  spread  whole  slices  of  bread  on  their 
broad,  aristocratic  palms.  Somewhere  in  the  dimmest 
recesses  of  those  cluttered  buildings  ten  thousand  rat- 
traps  await  expectant  the  oncoming  of  the  rats.  And 
in  your  own  basement — the  shadows  having  prospered 
in  the  twilight — it  is  sure  (by  the  beard  of  the 
prophet,  it  is  sure)  that  the  ash-pit  door  is  again 
ajar  and  that  a  pair  of  eyes  gleam  upon  you  from  the 
darkness.  If,  on  the  instant,  you  will  crouch  behind 
the  laundry  tubs  and  will  hold  your  breath — as 
though  a  doctor's  thermometer  were  in  your  mouth, 
you  with  a  cold  in  the  head — it's  likely  that  you  will 
see  a  Persian  climb  from  the  pit,  shake  the  ashes  off 

• 21  


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


him,  and  make  for  the  vantage  of  the  woodpile, 
where — the  window  being  barred — he  will  sigh  his 
soul  for  the  freedom  of  the  night. 


THE  \tfOK5T  EDITION 
OF   SHAKESPEAKE 


THE  \tfOIVST  EDITION 
OF   SHAKES  PEAKE  ID 

Reader,  if  by  fortunate  chance  you  have  a  son  of 
tender  years — the  age  is  best  from  the  sixth  to  the 
eleventh  summer — or  in  lieu  of  a  son,  a  nephew,  only 
a  few  years  in  pants — mere  shoots  of  nether  garments 
not  yet  descending  to  the  knees — doubtless,  if  such 
fortunate  chance  be  yours,  you  went  on  one  or  more 
occasions  last  summer  to  a  circus. 

If  the  true  holiday  spirit  be  in  you — and  you  be  of 
other  sort,  I'll  not  chronicle  you — you  will  have  come 
early  to  the  scene  for  a  just  examination  of  what 
mysteries  and  excitements  are  set  forth  in  the  side 
shows.  Now  if  you  be  a  man  of  humane  reasoning, 
you  will  stand  lightly  on  your  legs,  alert  to  be  pulled 
this  way  or  that  as  the  nepotic  wish  shall  direct, 


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


whether  it  be  to  the  fat  woman's  booth  or  to  the  plat 
form  where  the  thin  man  sits  with  legs  entwined 
behind  his  neck,  in  delightful  promise  of  what  joy 
awaits  you  when  jou  have  dropped  your  nickel  in 
the  box  and  gone  inside.  To  draw  your  steps,  it  is 
the  showman's  privilege  to  make  what  blare  he  please 
upon  the  sidewalk;  to  puff  his  cheeks  with  robustious 
announcement. 

If  by  further  fortunate  chance,  you  are  addicted, 
let  us  say,  in  the  quieter  hours  of  winter,  to  writing 
of  any  kind — and  for  your  joy,  I  pray  that  this  be  so, 
whether  this  writing  be  in  massive  volumes,  or 
obscure  and  unpublished  beyond  its  demerit — if  such 
has  been  your  addiction,  you  have  found,  doubtless, 
that  your  case  lies  much  like  the  fat  woman's;  that 
it  is  the  show  you  give  before  the  door  that  must 
determine  what  numbers  go  within — that,  to  be  plain 
with  you,  much  thought  must  be  given  to  the  taking 
of  your  title.  It  must  be  a  most  alluring  trumpeting, 
above  the  din  of  rival  shows. 

So  I  have  named  this  article  with  thought  of  how 
I  might  stir  your  learned  curiosity.  I  have  set 
scholars'  words  upon  my  platform,  thereby  to  make 
you  think  how  prodigiously  I  have  stuffed  the  matter 
in.  And  all  this  while,  my  article  has  to  do  only  with 
a  certain  set  of  Shakespeare  in  nine  calfskin  volumes, 
edited  by  a  man  named  John  Bell,  now  long  since 


26 


THE  WORST  EDITION  OF  SHAKESPEARE 

dead,  which  set  happens  to  have  stood  for  several 
years  upon  my  shelves;  also,  how  it  was  disclosed  to 
me  that  he  was  the  worst  of  all  editors,  together  with 
the  reasons  thereto  and  his  final  acquittal  from  the 
charge. 

John  Bell  has  stood,  for  the  most  part,  in  unfin- 
gered  tranquillity,  for  I  read  from  a  handier,  single 
volume.  Only  at  cleaning  times  has  he  been  touched, 
and  then  but  in  the  common  misery  with  all  my  books. 
Against  this  cleaning,  which  I  take  to  be  only  a  quirk 
of  the  female  brain,  I  have  often  urged  that  the  great, 
round  earth  itself  has  been  subjected  to  only  one 
flood,  and  that  even  that  was  a  failure,  for,  despite 
Noah's  shrewdness  at  the  gangway,  villains  still  per 
sist  on  it.  How  then  shall  my  books  profitably 
endure  a  deluge  both  autumn  and  spring? 

Thereafter,  when  the  tempest  has  spent  itself  and 
the  waters  have  returned  from  off  my  shelves,  I'll 
venture  in  the  room.  There  will  be  something 
different  in  the  sniff  of  the  place,  and  it  will  be 
marvelously  picked  up.  Yet  I  can  mend  these  faults. 
But  it  does  fret  me  how  books  will  be  standing  on 
their  heads.  Were  certain  volumes  only  singled  out 
to  stand  upon  their  heads,  Shaw  for  one,  and  others 
of  our  moderns,  I  would  suspect  the  housemaid  of 
expressing  in  this  fashion  a  sly  and  just  criticism  of 
their  inverted  beliefs.  I  accused  her  on  one  occasion 

27  . 


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


of  this  subtlety,  but  was  met  by  such  a  vacant  stare 
that  I  acquitted  her  at  once.  However,  as  she  leaves 
my  solidest  authors  also  on  their  heads,  men  beyond 
the  peradventure  of  such  antics,  I  must  consider  it 
but  a  part  of  her  carelessness,  for  which  I  have  warned 
her  twice.  Were  it  not  for  her  cunning  with  griddle- 
cakes,  to  which  I  am  much  affected,  I  would  have 
dismissed  her  before  this. 

And  now  this  Bell,  which  has  ridden  out  so  many 
of  my  floods,  is  proclaimed  to  me  a  villain.  We  had 
got  beyond  the  April  freshets  and  there  was  in  conse 
quence  a  soapy  smell  about.  It  is  clear  in  my  mind 
that  a  street  organ  had  started  up  a  gay  tune  and  that 
there  were  sounds  of  gathering  feet.  I  was  reading 
at  the  time,  in  the  green  rocker  by  the  lamp,  a  life  of 
John  Murray,  by  one  whose  name  I  have  forgotten, 
when  my  eyes  came  on  the  sentence  that  has  shaken 
me.  Bell,  it  said,  Bell  of  my  own  bookshelf,  of  all 
the  editors  of  Shakespeare  was  the  worst. 

In  my  agitation  I  removed  my  glasses,  breathed 
upon  the  lenses,  and  polished  them.  Here  was  one 
of  my  familiars  accused  of  something  that  was  doubt 
less  heinous,  although  in  what  particulars  I  was  at 
a  loss  to  know.  It  came  on  me  suddenly.  It  was  like 
a  whispered  scandal,  sinister  in  its  lack  of  detail.  All 
that  I  had  known  of  Bell  was  that  its  publication  had 
dated  from  the  eighteenth  century.  Yet  its  very  age 

28 


THE  WORST  EDITION  OF  SHAKESPEARE 


had  seemed  a  patent  of  respectability.  If  a  thing 
does  not  rot  and  smell  in  a  hundred  and  forty  years, 
it  would  seem  to  be  safe  from  corruption :  it  were  true 


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


peacock.  But  here  at  last  from  Bell  was  an  unsavory 
whiff.  My  flood  had  abated  only  a  fortnight  since, 
and  here  was  a  stowaway  escaped.  Bell  was  pro 
claimed  a  villain.  Again  had  a  flood  proved  itself  a 
failure. 

Now,  I  feel  no  shame  in  having  an  outsider  like 
Murray  display  to  me  these  hidden  evils;  for  I  owe 
no  inquisitorial  duty  to  my  books.  There  are  people 
who  will  not  admit  a  volume  to  their  shelves  until  they 
have  thrown  it  open  and  laid  its  contents  bare.  This 
is  the  unmannerly  conduct  of  the  customs  wharf. 
Indeed,  it  is  such  scrutiny,  doubtless,  that  induces 
some  authors  to  pack  their  ideas  obscurely,  thereby 
to  smuggle  them.  However,  there  being  now  a 
scandal  on  my  shelves,  I  must  spy  into  it. 

John  Murray,  wherein  I  had  read  the  charge,  had 
been  such  a  friendly,  tea-and-gossip  book,  not  the 
kind  to  hiss  a  scandal  at  you.  It  was  bound  in  blue 
cloth  and  was  a  heavy  book,  so  that  I  held  it  on  a 
cushion.  (And  this  device  I  recommend  to  others.) 
It  was  the  kind  of  book  that  stays  open  at  your  place, 
if  you  leave  it  for  a  moment  to  poke  the  fire.  Some 
books  will  flop  a  hundred  pages,  to  make  you  thumb 
them  back  and  forth,  though  whether  this  be  the 
binder's  fault  or  a  deviltry  set  therein  by  their  authors 
I  am  at  a  loss  to  say.  But  Shaw  would  be  of  this 
kind,  flopping  and  spry  to  mix  you  up.  And  in 

30 


THE  WORST  EDITION  OF  SHAKESPEARE 

general,  Shaw's  humor  is  like  that  of  a  shell-man 
at  a  country  fair — a  thimble-rigger.  No  matter 
where  3^ou  guess  that  he  has  placed  the  bean,  you  will 
be  always  wrong.  Even  though  you  swear  that  you 
have  seen  him  slip  it  under,  it's  but  his  cunning  to 
lead  you  off.  But  Murray  was  not  that  kind.  It 
would  stand  at  its  post,  unhitched,  like  a  family  horse. 

Here  was  quandary.  I  looked  at  Bell,  but  God 
forgive  me,  it  was  not  with  the  old  trustfulness.  He 
was  on  the  top  shelf  but  one,  just  in  line  with  the 
eyes,  with  gilt  front  winking  in  the  firelight.  I  had 
set  him  thus  conspicuous  with  intention,  because  of 
his  calfskin  binding,  quite  old  and  worn.  A  decayed 
Gibbon,  I  had  thought,  proclaims  a  grandfather.  A 
set  of  British  Essayists,  if  disordered,  takes  you  back 
of  the  black  walnut.  To  what  length,  then,  of  cul 
tured  ancestry  must  not  this  Bell  give  evidence?  (I 
had  bought  Bell,  secondhand,  on  Farringdon  Road, 
London,  from  a  cart,  cheap,  because  a  volume  was 
missing.) 

And  now  it  seemed  he  was  in  some  sort  a  villain. 
Although  shocked,  I  felt  a  secret  joy.  For  some 
what  too  broadly  had  Bell  smirked  his  sanctity  on 
me.  When  piety  has  been  flaunting  over  you,  you 
will  steal  a  slim  occasion  to  proclaim  a  flaw.  There 
is  much  human  nature  goes  to  the  stoning  of  a  saint. 
In  my  ignorance  I  had  set  the  rogue  in  the  company 

31 


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


of  the  decorous  Lorna  Doone  and  the  gentle  ladies 
of  Mrs.  Gaskell.  It  is  not  that  I  admire  that  chaste 
assembly.  But  it  were  monstrous,  even  so,  that  I 
should  neighbor  them  with  this  Bell,  who,  as  it 
appeared,  was  no  better  than  a  wolf  in  calf's  clothing. 
It  was  Little  Red  Riding  Hood,  you  will  recall,  who 
mistook  a  wolf  for  her  grandmother.  And  with  what 
grief  do  we  look  on  her  unhappy  endl 

My  hand  was  now  raised  to  drag  Bell  out  by  the 
heels,  when  I  reflected  that  what  I  had  heard  might 
be  unfounded  gossip,  mere  tattle,  and  that  before  I 
turned  against  an  old  acquaintance,  it  were  well  to 
set  an  inquiry  afoot.  First,  however,  I  put  him 
alongside  Herbert  Spencer.  If  it  were  Bell's  desire 
to  play  the  grandmother  to  him,  he  would  find  him 
tough  meat. 

Bell,  John — I  looked  him  up,  first  in  volume  Aus 
to  Bis  of  the  encyclopedia,  without  finding  him,  and 
then  successfully  in  the  National  Biography — Bell, 
John,  was  a  London  bookseller.  He  was  born  in 
1745,  published  his  edition  of  Shakespeare  in  1774, 
and  after  this  assault,  with  the  blood  upon  him,  lived 
fifty  years.  This  was  reassuring.  It  was  then  but 
a  bit  of  wild  oats,  no  hanging  matter.  I  now  went 
at  the  question  deeply.  Yet  I  left  him  awhile  with 
the  indigestible  Herbert. 


THE  WORST  EDITION  OF  SHAKESPEARE 

It  was  in  1774  that  Bell  squirted  his  dirty  ink.  In 
The  Gentleman's  Magazine  for  that  year  appear 
mutterings  from  America,  since  called  the  Boston 
Tea  Party.  I  set  this  down  to  bring  the  time  more 
warmly  to  your  mind,  for  a  date  alone  is  but  a  blurred 
signpost  unless  you  be  a  scholar.  And  it  is  advisedly 
that  I  quote  from  this  particular  periodical,  because 
its  old  files  can  best  put  the  past  back  upon  its  legs 
and  set  it  going.  There  is  a  kind  of  history-book  that 
sorts  the  bones  and  ties  them  all  about  with  strings, 
that  sets  the  past  up  and  bids  it  walk.  Yet  it  will  not 
wag  a  finger.  Its  knees  will  clap  together,  its  chest 
fall  in.  Such  books  are  like  the  scribblings  on  a  tomb 
stone;  the  ghost  below  gives  not  the  slightest  squeal 
of  life.  But  slap  it  shut  and  read  what  was  written 
hastily  at  the  time  on  the  pages  of  The  Gentleman's 
Magazine,  and  it  will  be  as  though  Gabriel  had  blown 
a  practice  toot  among  the  headstones.  It  is  then  that 
you  will  get  the  gibbering  of  returning  life. 

So  it  was  in  1774s  that  Bell  put  out  his  version  of 
Shakespeare.  Bell  was  not  a  man  of  the  schools. 
Caring  not  a  cracked  tinkle  for  learning,  it  was  not 
to  the  folios,  nor  to  any  authority  that  he  turned  for 
the  texts  of  his  plays.  Instead,  he  went  to  Drury 
Lane  and  Covent  Garden  and  took  their  acting 
copies.  These  volumes,  then,  that  catch  my  firelight 
hold  the  very  plays  that  the  crowds  of  1774  looked 

33  


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


upon.  Herein  is  the  Romeo,  word  for  word,  that 
Lydia  Languish  sniffled  over.  Herein  is  Shylock, 
not  yet  with  pathos  on  him,  but  a  buffoon  still,  to 
draw  the  gallery  laugh. 

A  few  nights  later,  having  by  grace  of  God  escaped 
a  dinner  out,  and  being  of  a  consequence  in  a  kindly 
mood,  the  scandal,  too,  having  somewhat  abated  in 
my  memory,  I  took  down  a  brown  volume  and  ran 
my  fingers  over  its  sides  and  along  its  yellow  edges. 
Then  I  made  myself  comfortable  and  opened  it  up. 

There  is  nothing  to-day  more  degenerate  than  our 
title-pages.  It  is  in  a  mean  spirit  that  we  pinch  and 
starve  them.  I  commend  the  older  kind  wherein, 
generously  ensampled,  is  the  promise  of  the  rich  diet 
that  shall  follow.  At  the  circus,  I  have  said,  I'll  go 
within  that  booth  that  has  most  allurement  on  its 
canvas  front,  and  where  the  hawker  has  the  biggest 
voice.  If  a  fellow  will  but  swallow  a  snake  upon  the 
platform  at  the  door,  my  money  is  already  in  my 
palm.  Thus  of  a  book  I  demand  an  earnest  on  the 
title-page. 

Bell's  title-page  is  of  the  right  kind.  In  the  pro 
fusion  and  variety  of  its  letters  it  is  like  a  printer's 
sample  book,  with  tall  letters  and  short  letters, 
dogmatic  letters  for  heaping  facts  on  you  and  script 
letters  reclining  on  their  elbows,  convalescent  in  the 
text.  There  are  slim  letters  and  again  the  very 

. 34  __^_— _— 


THE  WORST  EDITION  OF  SHAKESPEARE 

progeny  of  Falstaff.  And  what  flourishes  on  the 
page!  It  is  like  a  pond  after  the  aixtics  of  a  skater. 

There  follows  the  subscribers'  list.  It  is  a  Mr. 
Tickle's  set  that  has  come  to  me,  for  his  name  is  on 
the  fly-leaf.  But  for  me  and  this  set  of  Bell,  Mr. 
Tickle  would  seem  to  have  sunk  into  obscurity.  I 
proclaim  him  here,  and  if  there  be  anywhere  at 
this  day  younger  Tickles,  even  down  to  the  merest 
titillation,  may  they  see  these  lines  and  thus  take  a 
greeting  from  the  past. 

Then  follows  an  essay  on  oratory.  It  made  me 
grin  from  end  to  end.  Yet,  as  on  the  repeating  of  a 
comic  story,  it  is  hard  to  get  the  sting  and  rollic  on 
the  tongue.  And  much  quotation  on  a  page  makes 
it  like  a  foundling  hospital — sentences  unparented, 
ideas  abandoned  of  their  proper  text.  "Where  grief 
is  to  be  expressed,"  says  Bell,  "the  right  hand  laid 
slowly  on  the  left  breast,  the  head  and  chest  bending 
forward,  is  a  just  expression  of  it.  ...  Ardent 
affection  is  gained  by  closing  both  hands  warmly,  at 
half  arm's  length,  the  fingers  intermingling,  and 
bringing  them  to  the  breast  with  spirit.  .  .  .  Folding 
arms,  with  a  drooping  of  the  head,  describe  contem 
plation."  I  have  put  it  to  you  and  you  can  judge  it. 

Let  us  consider  Bell's  marginalia  of  the  plays! 
Every  age  has  importuned  itself  with  words.  Reason 
was  such  a  word,  and  fraternity,  and  liberty.  Effi- 


35 


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


ciency,  maybe,  is  the  latest,  though  it  is  sure  that 
when  you  want  anything  done  properly,  you  have 
to  fight  for  it.  It  is  below  the  dignity  of  my  page 
to  put  a  plumber  on  it,  yet  I  have  endured  occasions ! 
This  word  efficiency,  then,  comes  from  our  needs  and 
not  from  our  accomplishment.  It  is  at  best  a  march 
ing  song,  not  a  shout  of  victory.  It  is  when  the  house 
is  dirty  that  the  cry  goes  up  for  brooms. 

So  Bell  in  the  notes  upon  the  margins  of  his  pages 
echoes  a  world  that  is  talking  about  delicacy,  about 
sentiment,  about  equality.  (For  a  breeze  blows  up 
from  France.)  It  was  these  words  that  the  eight 
eenth  century  most  babbled  when  it  grew  old.  It 
had  horror  for  what  was  low  and  vulgar.  It  wore 
laces  on  its  doublet  front,  and  though  it  seldom 
washed,  it  perfumed  itself.  And  all  this  is  in  Bell, 
for  his  notes  are  a  running  comment  of  a  shallow, 
puritanistic  prig,  who  had  sharp  eyes  and  a  gossip's 
tongue.  This  was  the  time,  too,  when  such  words  as 
blanket  were  not  spoken  by  young  ladies  if  men  were 
about;  for  it  is  a  bedroom  word  and  therefore 
immoral.  Bell  objected  from  the  bottom  of  his  silly 
soul  that  Lady  Macbeth  should  soil  her  mouth  with 
it.  "Blanket  of  the  dark,"  he  says,  "is  an  expression 
greatly  below  our  author.  Curtain  is  evidently 
better."  "Was  the  hope  drunk  wherein  you  dressed 
yourself?"  Whereat  Bell  again  complains  that  Lady 


36 


THE  WORST  EDITION  OF  SHAKESPEARE 

Macbeth  is  "unnecessarily  indelicate."  "Though 
this  tragedy,"  says  Bell,  "must  be  allowed  a  very 
noble  composition,  it  is  highly  reprehensible  for 
exhibiting  the  chimeras  of  witchcraft,  and  still  more 
so  for  advancing  in  several  places  the  principles  of 
fatalism.  We  would  not  wish  to  see  young,  unsettled 
minds  to  peruse  this  piece  without  proper  companions 
to  prevent  absurd  prejudices." 

It  must  appear  from  this,  that,  although  one  gains 
no  knowledge  of  Shakespeare,  one  does  gain  a  con 
siderable  knowledge  of  Bell  and  of  his  time.  And 
this  is  just  as  well.  For  Bell's  light  on  Shakespeare 
would  be  but  a  sulphur  match  the  more  at  carnival 
time.  Indeed,  Shakespeare  criticism  has  been  such 
a  pageantry  of  spluttering  candle-ends  and  sniffing 
wicks  that  it  is  well  that  one  or  two  tallow  dips  leave 
the  rabble  and  illuminate  the  adjacent  alleys.  It  is 
down  such  an  alley  that  Bell's  smoking  light  goes 
wandering  off. 

As  I  read  Bell  this  night,  it  is  as  though  I  listen 
at  the  boxes  and  in  the  pit,  in  that  tinkling  time  of 
'seventy- four.  The  patched  Lsetitia  sits  surrounded 
by  her  beaux.  It  was  this  afternoon  she  had  the 
vapors.  Next  to  her,  as  dragon  over  teauty,  is  a  fat 
dame  with  "grenadier  head-dress."  "The  Rivals" 

37  


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


has  yet  to  be  written.  London  still  hears  "The 
Beggar's  Opera."  Lady  Macbeth  is  played  in  hoop- 
skirts.  The  Bastille  is  a  tolerably  tight  building. 
Robert  Burns  is  strewn  with  his  first  crumbs.  It  is 
the  age  of  omber,  of  sonnets  to  Chloe's  false  ringlets, 
of  odes  to  red  heels  and  epics  to  lap  dogs,  of  tinseled 
struttings  in  gilded  drawing-rooms.  It  was  town- 
and-alley,  this  age;  and  though  the  fields  lay  daily  in 
their  new  creation  with  sun  and  shadow  on  them, 
together  with  the  minstrelsy  of  the  winds  across  them 
and  the  still  pipings  of  leaf  and  water,  London,  the 
while,  kept  herself  in  her  smudgy  convent,  her  ear 
tuned  only  to  the  jolting  music  of  her  streets,  the 
rough  syncope  of  wheel  and  voice.  Since  then  what 
countless  winds  have  blown  across  the  world,  and 
cloud- wrack!  And  this  older  century  is  now  but  a 
clamor  of  the  memory.  What  mystery  it  is!  What 
were  the  happenings  in  that  pin-prick  of  universe 
called  London?  Of  all  the  millions  of  ant  hills  this 
side  Orion,  what  about  this  one?  London  was  so 
certain  it  was  the  center  of  circumambient  space. 
Tintinnabulate,  little  Bell! 

So  you  see  that  the  head  and  front  of  Bell's  villainy 
was  that  he  was  a  little  man  with  an  abnormal 
capacity  for  gossip.  If  gossip,  then,  be  a  gallows 

38  — 


THE  WORST  EDITION  OF  SHAKESPEARE 

matter,  let  Bell  unbutton  him  for  the  end.  On  the 
contrary,  if  gossip  be  but  a  trifle,  here  were  a  case  for 
clement  judgment. 

In  the  first  place,  there  is  no  vice  of  necessity  in 
gossip.  This  must  be  clearly  understood.  It  is 
proximity  in  time  and  place  that  makes  it  intolerable. 
A  gossip  next  door  may  be  a  nuisance.  A  gossip  in 
history  may  be  delightful.  No  doubt  if  I  had  lived 
in  Auchinleck  in  the  days  when  Boswell  lived  at  home, 
I  would  have  thought  him  a  nasty  little  "skike." 
But  let  him  get  to  London  and  far  off  in  the  revolving 
years,  and  I  admit  him  virtuous. 

A  gossip  seldom  dies.  The  oldest  person  in  every 
community  is  a  gossip  and  there  are  others  still 
blooming  and  tender,  who  we  know  will  live  to  be 
leathery  and  hard.  That  the  life-insurance  actuaries 
do  not  recognize  this  truth  is  a  shame  to  their  percep 
tion.  Ancestral  lesions  should  bulk  for  them  no 
bigger  than  any  slightest  taint  of  keyhole  lassitude. 
For  it  is  by  thinking  of  ourselves  that  we  die.  It 
leads  to  rheums  and  indigestions  and  off  we  go.  And 
even  an  ignoble  altruism  would  save  us.  I  know  one 
old  lady  who  has  been  preserved  to  us  these  thirty 
years  by  no  other  nostrum  than  a  knot-hole  appear 
ing  in  her  garden  fence. 


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


It  is  a  matter  of  doubt  whether  at  the  fashionable 
cures  it  is  the  water  that  has  chief  potency;  or 
whether,  so  many  being  met  together  each  morning 


at  the  pump,  it  is  not  the  exchange  of  these  bits  of 
news  that  leads  to  convalescence.  It  is  marvelous 
how  a  dull  eye  lights  up  if  the  bit  be  spicy.  There 
was  a  famous  cure,  I'm  told,  though  I  answer  not  for 


40 


THE  WORST  EDITION  OF  SHAKESPEARE 

the  truth  of  this,  closed  up  for  no  other  reason  than 
that  a  deeper  scandal  being  hissed  about  (a  lady's 
maid  affair),  all  the  inmates  became  distracted  from 
their  own  complaints,  and  so,  being  made  new, 
departed.  To  this  day  the  building  stands  with 
broken  doors  and  windows  as  testament  to  the  blight 
such  a  sudden  miracle  put  on  the  springs. 

This  shows,  therefore,  that  gossipry  must  be  judged 
by  its  effects.  If  it  allay  the  stone  or  give  a  pleasant 
evening  it  should  have  reward  instead  of  punishment. 
And  here  had  Bell  diverted  me  agreeably  for  an  hour. 
It  is  true  he  had  given  me  no  "chill  and  arid  knowl 
edge"  of  Shakespeare,  but  I  had  had  ample  substitute 
and  the  clock  had  struck  ten  before  its  time.  It  were 
justice,  then,  that  I  cast  back  the  lie  on  Murray  and 
give  Bell  full  acquittal. 

No  sooner  was  this  decision  made  than  I  lifted  him 
tenderly  from  the  shelf  where  I  had  sequestered  him. 
Volume  seven  was  on  its  head,  but  I  set  it  upright. 
Then  I  stroked  its  sides  and  blew  upon  its  top,  as  is 
my  custom.  At  the  last  I  put  him  on  his  former 
shelf  in  the  company  of  the  chaste  Lorna  Doone  and 
the  gentle  ladies  of  Mrs.  Gaskell. 

He  sits  there  now,  this  night,  on  the  top  shelf  but 
one,  just  in  line  with  the  eyes,  with  gilt  front  winking 

.  41  —-————_-_—__ 


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


in  the  firelight.  A  decayed  Gibbon,  I  had  thought, 
proclaims  a  grandfather.  To  what  length,  then,  of 
cultured  ancestry  must  not  this  Bell  give  evidence? 


THE     DECLINE    OF 
NIGHT-CAPS 


THE     DECLINE    OF 
NIGHT-CAPS   ^£^ 

It  sounds  like  the  tinkle  of  triviality  to  descend 
from  the  stern  business  of  this  present  time  to  write 
of  night-caps:  And  yet  while  the  discordant  battles 
are  puffing  their  cheeks  upon  the  rumbling  bass  pipes, 
it  is  relief  if  there  be  intermingled  a  small,  shrill 
treble — any  slightest  squeak  outside  the  general  woe. 

There  was  a  time  when  the  chief  issue  of  fowl 
was  feather-beds.  Some  few  tallest  and  straightest 
feathers,  maybe,  were  used  on  women's  hats,  and  a 
few  of  better  nib  than  common  were  set  aside  for 
poets'  use — goose  feathers  in  particular  being  fash 
ioned  properly  for  the  softer  flutings,  whether  of 


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


Love  or  Spring — but  in  the  main  the  manifest 
destiny  of  a  feather  was  a  feather-bed. 

In  those  days  it  was  not  enough  that  you  plunged 
to  the  chin  in  this  hot  swarm  of  feathers,  for  discre 
tion,  in  an  attempt  to  ward  off  from  you  all  snuffling 
rheums,  coughings,  hackings  and  other  fleshly  ills, 
required  you  before  kicking  off  the  final  slippers  to 
shut  the  windows  against  what  were  believed  to  be 
the  dank  humors  of  the  night.  Nor  was  this  enough. 
You  slept,  of  course,  in  a  four-post  bed;  and  the 
curtains  had  to  be  pulled  together  beyond  the  per- 
adventure  of  a  cranny.  Then  as  a  last  prophylaxis 
you  put  on  a  night-cap.  Mr.  Pickwick's  was  tied 
under  the  chin  like  a  sunbonnet  and  the  cords  dangled 
against  his  chest,  but  this  was  a  matter  of  taste.  It 
was  behind  such  triple  rampart  that  you  slept,  and 
were  adjudged  safe  from  the  foul  contagion  of  the 
dark.  Consequently  your  bed  was  not  exactly  like 
a  little  boat.  Rather  it  was  like  a  Pullman  sleeper, 
which,  as  you  will  remember,  was  invented  early  in 
the  nineteenth  century  and  stands  as  a  monument 
to  its  wisdom. 

I  have  marveled  at  the  ease  with  which  Othello 
strangled  Desdemona.  Further  thought  gives  it 
explanation.  The  poor  girl  was  half  suffocated 
before  he  laid  hands  on  her.  I  find  also  a  solution 
of  Macbeth's  enigmatic  speech,  "Wicked  dreams 

46  ..       . 


THE  DECLINE  OF  NIGHT-CAPS 


abuse  the  curtain'd  sleep."  Any  dream  that  could 
get  at  you  through  the  circumvallation  of  glass, 
brocade,  cotton  and  feathers  could  be  no  better  than 
a  quadruplicated  house-breaker,  compounded  out  of 
desperate  villainies. 

Reader,  have  you  ever  purchased  a  pair  of  pajamas 
in  London?  This  is  homely  stuff  I  write,  yet  there's 
pathos  in  it.  That  jaunty  air  betokens  the  beginning 
of  your  search  before  question  and  reiteration  have 
dulled  your  spirits.  Later,  there  will  be  less  sparkle 
in  your  eye.  What!  Do  not  the  English  wear  pa 
jamas?  Does  not  the  sex  that  is  bifurcated  by  day 
keep  by  night  to  its  manly  bifurcation?  Is  not  each 
separate  leg  swathed  in  complete  divorcement  from 
its  fellow?  Or,  womanish,  do  they  rest  in  the  common 
dormitory  of  a  shirt  de  nuit?  The  Englishman  does 
wear  pajamas,  but  the  word  with  him  takes  on  an 
Icelandic  meaning.  They  are  built  to  the  prescrip 
tion  of  an  Esquimo.  They  are  woolly,  fuzzy  and 
the  width  of  a  finger  thick.  If  I  were  a  night- 
watchman,  "doom'd  for  a  certain  term  to  walk  the 
night,"  I  should  insist  on  English  pajamas  to  keep 
me  awake.  If  Saint  Sebastian,  who,  I  take  it,  wore 
sackcloth  for  the  glory  of  his  soul,  could  have  lighted 
on  the  pair  of  pajamas  that  I  bought  on  Oxford 
Circus,  his  halo  would  have  burned  the  brighter. 

Just  how  the  feathery  and  billowy  nights  of  our 

47  


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


great-grandparents  were  changed  into  the  present  is 
too  deep  for  explanation.  Perhaps  Annie  left  a  door 
or  window  open — such  neglect  fitting  with  her  other 
heedlessness — and  notwithstanding  this  means  of 
entry,  it  was  found  in  the  morning  that  no  sprite  or 
ooph  had  got  in  to  pinch  the  noses  of  the  sleepers. 
At  least,  there  was  no  evidence  of  such  a  visitation, 
unless  the  snoring  that  abounded  all  the  night  did 
proceed  from  the  pinching  of  the  nose  (the  nasal 
orifice  being  so  clamped  betwixt  the  forefinger  and 
the  thumb  of  these  devilish  sprites  that  the  breath 
was  denied  its  proper  channel).  Unless  snoring  was 
so  caused,  it  is  clear  that  no  ooph  had  clambered 
through  the  window. 

Or  perhaps  some  brave  man — a  brother  to  him  who 
first  ate  an  oyster — put  up  the  window  out  of  bravado 
to  snap  thereby  his  fingers  at  the  forms  of  darkness, 
and  being  found  whole  and  without  blemish  or  mark 
of  witch  upon  his  throat  and  without  catarrhal 
snuffling  in  his  nose,  of  a  consequence  the  harsh 
opinion  against  the  night  softened. 

Or  maybe  some  younger  woman  threw  up  her 
window  to  listen  to  the  slim  tenor  of  moonlight 
passion  with  such  strumming  business  as  accom 
panied — tinkling  of  cithern  or  mandolin — and  so 
with  chin  in  hand,  she  sighed  her  soul  abroad,  to  the 
result  that  the  closing  was  forgotten.  It  is  like 

— — — — — — - — —  48 


THE  DECLINE  OF  NIGHT-CAPS 


enough  that  her  dreams  were  all  the  sweeter  for  the 
breeze  that  blew  across  her  bed — loaded  with  the 
rhythmic  memory  of  the  words  she  had  heard  within 
the  night. 

It  was  vanity  killed  the  night-cap.  What  alder- 
manic  man  would  risk  the  chance  of  seeing  himself 
in  the  mirror?  What  judge,  peruked  by  day,  could 
so  contain  his  learned  locks?  What  male  with  waxed 
moustachios,  or  with  limpest  beard,  or  chin  new- 
reaped  would  put  his  ears  in  such  a  compress?  You 
will  recall  how  Mr.  Pickwick  snatched  his  off  when 
he  found  the  lady  in  the  curl  papers  in  his  room.  His 
round  face  showed  red  with  shame  against  the  dusky 
bed-curtains,  like  the  sun  peering  through  the  fog. 

As  for  bed-curtains,  they  served  the  intrigue  of  at 
least  five  generations  of  novelists  from  Fielding 
onward.  There  was  not  a  rogue's  tale  of  the  eight 
eenth  century  complete  without  them.  The  wrong 
persons  were  always  being  pinned  up  inside  them. 
The  cause  of  such  confusion  started  in  the  tap,  too 
much  negus  or  an  over-drop  of  pineapple  rum  with 
a  lemon  in  it  or  a  potent  drink  whose  name  I  have 
forgotten  that  was  always  ordered  "and  make  it  luke, 
my  dear."  Then,  after  such  evening,  a  turn  to  the 
left  instead  of  right,  a  wrong  counting  of  doors  along 
the  passage,  the  jiggling  of  bed-curtains,  screams 
and  consternation.  It  is  one  of  the  seven  original 


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


plots.  Except  for  clothes-closets,  screens  and  bed- 
curtains,  Sterne  must  have  gone  out  of  the  novel 
business,  Sheridan  have  lost  fecundity  and  Dryden 
starved  in  a  garret.  But  the  moths  got  into  their  red 
brocade  at  last  and  a  pretty  meal  they  made. 

A  sleeping  porch  is  the  symbol  of  the  friendly 
truce  between  man  and  the  material  universe.  The 
world  itself  and  the  void  spaces  of  its  wanderings, 
together  with  the  elements  of  our  celestial  neighbor 
hood,  have  been  viewed  by  man  with  dark  suspicion, 
with  rather  a  squint-eyed  prejudice.  Let's  take 
a  single  case !  Winds  for  a  long  time  have  borne  bad 
reputations — except  such  anemic  collateral  as  are 
called  zephyrs — but  winds,  properly  speaking,  which 
are  big  and  strong  enough  to  have  rough  chins  and 
beards  coming,  have  been  looked  upon  as  roustabouts. 
What  was  mere  humor  in  their  behavior  has  been  set 
down  to  mischief.  If  a  wind  in  playfulness  does  but 
shake  a  casement,  or  if  in  frolic  it  scatters  the  ashes 
across  the  hearth,  or  if  in  liveliness  it  swishes  you  as 
you  turn  a  corner  and  drives  you  aslant  across  the 
street,  is  it  right  that  you  set  your  tongue  to  gossip 
and  judge  it  a  son  of  Belial? 

There  are  persons  also — but  such  sleep  indoors — 
in  whose  ears  the  wind  whistles  only  gloomy  tunes. 
Or  if  it  rise  to  shrill  piping,  it  rouses  only  a  fear  of 
chimneys.  Thus  in  both  high  pitch  and  low  there  is 


50 


THE  DECLINE  OF  NIGHT-CAPS 


fear  in  the  hearing  of  it.  Into  their  faces  will  come 
a  kind  of  God-help-the-poor-sailors-in-the-channel 
look,  as  in  a  melodrama  when  the  paper  snowstorm  is 
at  its  worst  and  the  wind  machine  is  straining  at  its 
straps.  One  would  think  that  they  were  afraid  the 
old  earth  itself  might  be  buffeted  off  its  course  and 
fall  afoul  of  neighboring  planets. 

But  behold  the  man  whose  custom  is  to  sleep  upon 
a  porch!  At  what  slightest  hint — the  night  being  yet 
young,  with  scarce  three  yawns  gone  round — does  he 
shut  his  book  and  screen  the  fire!  With  what  speed 
he  bolts  the  door  and  puts  out  the  downstairs  lights, 
lest  callers  catch  him  in  the  business!  How  briskly 
does  he  mount  the  stairs  with  fingers  already  on  the 
buttons!  Then  with  what  scattering  of  garments  he 
makes  him  ready,  as  though  his  explosive  speed  had 
blown  him  all  to  pieces  and  lodged  him  about  the 
room! 

Then  behold  him — such  general  amputation  not 
having  proved  fatal — advancing  to  the  door  muffled 
like  a  monk!  There  is  a  slippered  flight.  He  dives 
beneath  the  covers.  (I  draw  you  a  winter  picture.) 
You  will  see  no  more  of  him  now  than  the  tip  of  his 
nose,  rising  like  a  little  ^Etna  from  the  waves. 

But  does  he  fear  the  wind  as  it  fumbles  around  the 
porch  and  plays  like  a  kitten  with  the  awning  cords? 
Bless  you,  he  has  become  a  playmate  of  the  children 


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


of  the  night — the  swaying  branches,  the  stars,  the 
swirl  of  leaves — all  the  romping  children  of  the  night. 
And  if  there  was  any  fear  at  all  within  the  darkness, 
it  has  gone  to  sulk  behind  the  mountains. 


But  the  wind  sings  a  sleepy  song  and  the  game's 
too  short.  Then  the  wind  goes  round  and  round  the 
house  looking  for  the  leaves — for  the  wind  is  a  bit  of 
a  nursemaid — and  wherever  it  finds  them  it  tucks 


THE  DECLINE  OF  NIGHT-CAPS 


them  in,  under  fences  and  up  against  cellar  windows 
where  they  will  be  safe  until  morning.  Then  it  goes 
off  on  other  business,  for  there  are  other  streets  in 
town  and  a  great  many  leaves  to  be  attended  to. 

But  the  fellow  with  the  periscopic  nose  above  the 
covers  lies  on  his  back  beneath  the  stars,  and  contem 
plation  journeys  to  him  from  the  wide  spaces  of  the 
night. 


53 


MAP5  AND  RABBIT- HOLES 


MARS  AND  RABBIT- HOLES 

In  what  pleasurable  mystery  would  we  live  were 
it  not  for  maps !  If  I  chance  on  the  name  of  a  town 
I  have  visited,  I  locate  it  on  a  map.  I  may  not 
actually  get  down  the  atlas  and  put  my  finger  on 
the  name,  but  at  least  I  picture  to  myself  its  lines  and 
contour  and  judge  its  miles  in  inches.  And  thereby 
for  a  thing  of  ink  and  cardboard  I  have  banished 
from  the  world  its  immensity  and  mystery.  But  if 
there  were  no  maps — what  then?  By  other  devices 
I  would  have  to  locate  it.  I  would  say  that  it  came 
at  the  end  of  some  particular  day's  journey;  that  it 
lies  in  the  twilight  at  the  conclusion  of  twenty  miles 
of  dusty  road;  that  it  lies  one  hour  nightward  of  a 
blow-out.  I  would  make  it  neighbor  to  an  appetite 
gratified  and  a  thirst  assuaged,  a  cool  bath,  a  lazy 
evening  with  starlight  and  country  sounds.  Is  not 
this  better  than  a  dot  on  a  printed  page? 


57 


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


That  is  the  town,  I  would  say,  where  we  had  the 
mutton  chops  and  where  we  heard  the  bullfrogs  on 
the  bridge.  Or  that  town  may  be  circumstanced  in 
cherry  pie,  a  comical  face  at  the  next  table,  a  friendly 
dog  with  hair-trigger  tail,  or  some  immortal  glass  of 
beer  on  a  bench  outside  a  road-inn.  These  things 
make  that  town  as  a  flame  in  the  darkness,  a  flame 
on  a  hillside  to  overtop  my  course.  Many  years  can 


58 


MAPS  AND  RABBIT-HOLES 


go  grinding  by  without  obliterating  the  pleasant  sight 
of  its  flare.  Or  maybe  the  town  is  so  intermingled 
with  dismal  memories  that  no  good  comes  of  too 
particularly  locating  it.  Then  Tony  Lumpkin's 
advice  on  finding  Mr.  Hardcastle's  house  is  enough. 
"It's  a  damn'd  long,  dark,  boggy,  dirty,  dangerous 
way."  And  let  it  go  at  that. 

Maps  are  toadies  to  the  thoroughfares.  They 
shower  their  attentions  on  the  wide  pavements,  hold 
ing  them  up  to  observation,  marking  them  in  red,  and 
babbling  and  prattling  obsequiously  about  them, 
meanwhile  snubbing  with  disregard  all  the  lanes  and 
bypaths.  They  are  cockney  and  are  interested  in 
showing  only  the  highroads  between  cities,  and  in 
consequence  neglect  all  tributary  loops  and  windings. 
In  a  word,  they  are  against  the  jog-trot  countryside 
and  conspire  with  the  signposts  against  all  loitering 
and  irregularity. 

As  for  me,  I  do  not  like  a  straight  thoroughfare. 
To  travel  such  a  road  is  like  passing  a  holiday  with 
a  man  who  is  going  about  his  business.  Idle  as  you 
are,  vacant  of  purpose,  alert  for  distraction,  he  must 
keep  his  eyes  straight  ahead  arid  he  must  attend  to 
the  business  in  hand.  I  like  a  road  that  is  at  heart 
a  vagabond,  which  loiters  in  the  shade  and  turns  its 
head  on  occasion  to  look  around  the  corner  of  a  hill, 
which  will  seek  out  obscure  villages  even  though  it 


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


requires  a  zigzag  course  up  a  hillside,  which  follows 
a  river  for  the  very  love  of  its  company  and  humors 
its  windings,  which  trots  alongside  and  listens  to  its 
ripple  and  then  crosses,  sans  bridge,  like  a  schoolboy, 
with  its  toes  in  the  water.  I  love  a  road  which  goes 
with  the  easy,  rolling  gait  of  a  sailor  ashore.  It  has 
no  thought  of  time  and  it  accepts  all  the  vagaries  of 
your  laziness.  I  love  a  road  which  weaves  itself  into 
eddies  of  eager  traffic  before  the  door  of  an  inn,  and 
stops  a  minute  at  the  drinking  trough  because  it  has 
heard  the  thirst  in  your  horse's  whinny;  and  after 
wards  it  bends  its  head  on  the  hillside  for  a  last  look 
at  the  kindly  spot.  Ah,  but  the  vagabond  cannot 
remain  long  on  the  hills.  Its  best  are  its  lower  levels. 
So  down  it  dips.  The  descent  is  easy  for  roads  and 
cart  wheels  and  vagabonds  and  much  else;  until  in 
the  evening  it  hears  again  the  murmur  of  waters,  and 
its  journey  has  ended. 

There  is  of  course  some  fun  in  a  map  that  is  all 
wrong.  Those,  for  example,  of  the  early  navigators 
are  worth  anybody's  time.  There  is  possibility  in 
one  that  shows  Japan  where  Long  Island  ought  to 
be.  That  map  is  human.  It  makes  a  correct  and 
proper  map  no  better  than  a  molly-coddle.  There 
can  be  fine  excitement  in  learning  on  the  best  of  four 
teenth  century  authority  that  there  is  no  America  and 
that  India  lies  outside  the  Pillars  of  Hercules.  The 

'•  60 


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


uncharted  seas,  the  incognova  terra  where  lions  are 
(ubi  leones  erunt,  as  the  maps  say) ,  these  must  always 
stir  us.  In  my  copy  of  Gulliver  are  maps  of  his 
discoveries.  Lilliput  lies  off  the  coast  of  Sumatra 
and  must  now  be  within  sight  of  the  passengers  bound 
from  London  to  Melbourne  if  only  they  had  eyes  to 
see  it.  Brobdingnag,  would  you  believe  it,  is  a  hump 
on  the  west  coast  of  America  and  cannot  be  far  from 
San  Francisco.  That  gives  one  a  start.  Swift, 
writing  in  1725  with  a  world  to  choose  from,  selects 
the  Calif  ornian  coast  as  the  most  remote  and  unknown 
for  the  scene  of  his  fantastical  adventure.  It  thrusts 
1725  into  a  gray  antiquity.  And  yet  there  are  many 
buildings  in  England  still  standing  that  antedate 
1725  by  many  years,  some  by  centuries.  Queen 
Elizabeth  had  been  dead  more  than  a  hundred  years. 
Canterbury  was  almost  as  old  and  probably  in  worse 
repair  than  it  is  now,  when  Frisco  was  still  Brob 
dingnag.  Can  it  be  that  the  giant  red  trees  and  the 
tall  bragging  of  the  coast  date  from  its  heroic  past? 

Story-writers  have  nearly  always  been  the  foes  of 
maps,  finding  in  them  a  kind  of  cramping  of  their 
mental  legs.  And  in  consequence  they  have  struck 
upon  certain  devices  for  getting  off  the  map  and  away 
from  its  precise  and  restricting  bigotry.  Davy  fell 
asleep.  It  was  Davy,  you  remember,  who  grew 
drowsy  one  winter  afternoon  before  the  fire  and  sailed 


MAPS  AND  RABBIT-HOLES 


away  with  the  goblin  in  his  grandfather's  clock. 
Robinson  Crusoe  was  driven  off  his  bearings  by  stress 
of  weather  at  sea.  This  is  a  popular  device  for  elud 
ing  the  known  world.  Whenever  in  your  novel  you 
come  on  a  sentence  like  this — On  the  third  night  it 
came  on  to  blow  and  that  night  and  the  three  succeed 
ing  days  and  nights  we  ran  close-reefed  before  the 
tempest — whenever  you  come  on  a  sentence  like  that, 
you  may  know  that  the  author  feels  pinched  and 
cramped  by  civilization,  and  is  going  to  regale  you 
with  some  adventures  of  his  uncharted  imagination 
which  are  likely  to  be  worth  your  attention. 

Then  there  was  Sentimental  Tommy!  Do  you 
remember  how  he  came  to  find  the  Enchanted  Street? 
It  happened  that  there  was  a  parade,  "an  endless  row 
of  policemen  walking  in  single  file,  all  with  the  right 
leg  in  the  air  at  the  same  time,  then  the  left  leg. 
Seeing  at  once  that  they  were  after  him,  Tommy  ran, 
ran,  ran  until  in  turning  a  corner  he  found  himself 
wedged  between  two  legs.  He  was  of  just  sufficient 
size  to  fill  the  aperture,  but  after  a  momentary  lock 
he  squeezed  through,  and  they  proved  to  be  the  gate 
into  an  enchanted  land."  In  that  lies  the  whole 
philosophy  of  going  without  a  map.  There  is  magic 
in  the  world  then.  There  are  surprises.  You  do  not 
know  what  is  ahead.  And  you  cannot  tell  what  is 
about  to  happen.  You  move  in  a  proper  twilight  of 

—  63  — 


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


events.  After  that  Tommy  went  looking  for  police 
men's  legs.  Doubtless  there  were  some  details  of  the 
wizardry  that  he  overlooked,  as  never  again  could  he 
come  out  on  the  Enchanted  Street  in  quite  the  same 
fashion.  Alice  had  a  different  method.  She  fell 
down  a  rabbit-hole  and  thereby  freed  herself  from 
some  very  irksome  lessons  and  besides  met  several 
interesting  people,  including  a  Duchess.  Alice  may 
be  considered  the  very  John  Cabot  of  the  rabbit-hole. 
Before  her  time  it  was  known  only  to  rabbits,  wood- 
chucks,  and  dogs  on  holidays,  whose  noses  are  muddy 
with  poking.  But  since  her  time  all  this  is  changed. 
Now  it  is  known  as  the  portal  of  adventure. 
It  is  the  escape  from  the  plane  of  life  into  its  third 
dimension. 

Children  have  the  true  understanding  of  maps. 
They  never  yield  slavishly  to  them.  If  they  want  a 
pirates'  den  they  put  it  where  it  is  handiest,  behind 
the  couch  in  the  sitting-room,  just  beyond  the  glim 
mer  of  firelight.  If  they  want  an  Indian  village, 
where  is  there  a  better  place  than  in  the  black  space 
under  the  stairs,  where  it  can  be  reached  without 
great  fatigue  after  supper?  Farthest  Thule  may  be 
behind  the  asparagus  bed.  The  North  Pole  itself 
may  be  decorated  by  Annie  on  Monday  afternoon 
with  the  week's  wash.  From  whatever  house  you  hear 
a  child's  laugh,  if  it  be  a  real  child  and  therefore  a 


64 


MAPS  AND  RABBIT-HOLES 


great  poet,  3^011  may  know  that  from  the  garret 
window,  even  as  you  pass,  Sinbad,  adrift  on  the 
Indian  Ocean,  may  be  looking  for  a  sail,  and  that 
the  forty  thieves  huddle,  daggers  drawn,  in  the  coal 
hole.  Then  it  is  a  fine  thing  for  a  child  to  run  away 
to  sea — well,  really  not  to  sea,  but  down  the  street, 
past  gates  and  gates  and  gates,  until  it  comes  to  the 
edge  of  the  known  and  sees  a  collie  or  some  such 
terrible  thing.  I  myself  have  fine  recollection  of 
running  away  from  a  farmhouse.  Maybe  I  did  not 
get  more  than  a  hundred  paces,  but  I  looked  on  some 
broad  heavens,  saw  a  new  mystery  in  the  night's 
shadows,  and  just  before  I  became  afraid  I  had  a 
taste  of  a  new  life. 

To  me  it  is  strange  that  so  few  people  go  down 
rabbit-holes.  We  cannot  be  expected  to  find  the  same 
delight  in  squeezing  our  fat  selves  behind  the  couch 
of  evenings,  nor  can  we  hope  to  find  that  the  Chinese 
Mountains  actually  lie  beyond  our  garden  fence. 
We  cannot  exactly  run  away  either;  after  one  is 
twenty,  that  takes  on  an  ugly  and  vagrant  look, 
commendable  as  it  may  be  on  the  early  marches. 
Prince  Hal  is  always  a  more  amiable  spectacle  than 
John  Falstaff ,  much  as  we  love  the  knight.  But  there 
are  men,  however  few,  who  although  they  are  beyond 
forty,  retain  in  themselves  a  fine  zest  for  adventure. 
A  man  who,  I  am  proud  to  say,  is  a  friend  of  mine 


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


and  who  is  a  devil  for  work  by  which  he  is  making 
himself  known  in  the  world,  goes  of  evenings 
into  the  most  delightful  truantry  with  his  music. 
And  it  isn't  only  music,  it  is  flowers  and  pictures  and 
books.  Of  course  he  has  an  unusual  brain  and  few 
men  can  hope  to  equal  him.  He  is  like  Disraeli  in 
that  respect,  who,  it  is  said,  could  turn  in  a  flash  from 
the  problem  of  financing  the  Suez  Canal  to  the  con 
templation  of  the  daffodils  nodding  along  the  fence. 
But  do  the  rest  of  us  try?  There  are  few  men  of 
business,  no  matter  with  what  singleness  of  purpose 
they  have  been  installing  their  machinery  and  count 
ing  their  nickels,  but  will  admit  that  this  is  but  a  small 
part  of  life.  They  dream  of  rabbit-holes,  but  they 
will  never  go  down  one.  I  had  dinner  recently  with 
a  man  who  by  his  honesty  and  perseverance  has  built 
up  and  maintained  a  large  and  successful  business. 
An  orchestra  was  playing,  and  when  it  finished  the 
man  told  me  that  if  he  could  write  music  like  that  we 
had  heard  he  would  devote  himself  to  it.  Well,  if  he 
has  enough  desire  in  him  for  that  speech,  he  owes  it  to 
himself  that  he  sound  his  own  depths  for  the  dis 
coveries  he  may  make.  It  is  doubtful  if  this  quest 
would  really  lead  him  to  write  music,  God  forbid;  it 
might  however  induce  him  to  develop  a  latent  appre 
ciation  until  it  became  in  him  both  a  refreshment  and 
a  stimulus. 

66 _ 


MAPS  AND  RABBIT-HOLES 


There  are  many  places  uncharted  that  are  worth 
a  visit.  Treasure  Island  is  somewhere  on  the  seas, 
the  still-vex'd  Bermoothes  feel  the  wind  of  some 
southern  ocean,  the  coast  of  Bohemia  lies  on  the 
furthermost  shore  of  fairyland — all  of  these  wonder 
ful,  like  white  towers  in  the  mind.  But  nearer  home, 
as  near  as  the  pirates'  den  that  we  built  as  children, 
within  sight  of  our  firelight,  should  come  the  dreams 
and  thoughts  that  set  us  free  from  sordidness,  that 
teach  our  minds  versatility  and  sympathy,  that  create 
for  us  hobbies  and  avocations  of  worth,  that  rest  and 
refresh  us.  If  we  must  be  ocean  liners  all  day,  plod 
ding  between  known  and  monotonous  ports,  at  least 
we  may  be  tramp  ships  at  night,  cargoed  with  strange 
stuffs  and  trafficking  for  lonely  and  unvisited  seas. 


TUNES   FOR  SPRING 


TUNE5   FOR  SPRING 

Cuckoo,  jug- jug,  pu-we,  to-witta-woo ! 
Spring,  the  sweet  Spring! 

If  by  any  chance  you  have  seen  a  man  in  a  coat 
with  sagging  pockets,  and  a  cloth  hat  of  the  latest 
fashion  but  two — a  hat  which  I  may  say  is  precious 
to  him  (old  friends,  old  wine,  old  hats) — emerging 
from  his  house  just  short  of  noon,  do  not  lay  his 
belated  appearance  to  any  disorder  in  his  conduct! 
Certain  neighbors  at  their  windows  as  he  passed, 
raised  their  eyes  in  a  manner,  if  I  mistake  not,  of 
suspicion  that  a  man  should  be  so  far  trespassing  on 
the  day,  for  nine  o'clock  should  be  the  penny-picker's 
latest  departure  for  the  vineyard.  Thereafter  the 
street  belongs  to  the  women,  except  for  such  sprouting 
and  unripe  manhood  as  brings  the  groceries,  and  the 


71 


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


hardened  villainy  that  fetches  ice  and  with  deep  voice 
breaks  the  treble  of  the  neighborhood.  But  beyond 
these  there  are  no  men  in  sight  save  the  pantalooned 
exception  who  mows  the  grass,  and  with  the  whirr  of 
his  clicking  knives  sounds  the  prelude  of  the  summer. 
I'll  say  by  way  of  no  more  than  a  parenthetical  flick 
of  notice  that  his  eastern  front,  conspicuous  from  the 
rear  as  he  bends  forward  over  his  machine,  shows  a 
patched  and  jointed  mullionry  that  is  not  unlike  the 
tracery  of  some  cathedral's  rounded  apse.  But  I  go 
too  far  in  imagery.  Plain  speech  is  best.  I'll  waive 
the  gothic  touch. 

But  observe  this  sluggard  who  issues  from  his 
door!  He  knows  he  is  suspected — that  the  finger  is 
uplifted  and  the  chin  is  wagging.  And  so  he  takes 
on  a  smarter  stride  with  a  pretense  of  briskness,  to 
proclaim  thereby  the  virtue  of  having  risen  early 
despite  his  belated  appearance,  and  what  mighty 
business  he  has  despatched  within  the  morning. 

But  you  will  get  no  clue  as  to  whether  he  has  been 
closeted  with  the  law,  or  whether  it  is  domestic  fac 
tion — plumbers  or  others  of  their  ilk  (if  indeed 
plumbers  really  have  any  ilk  and  do  not,  as  I  suspect, 
stand  unbrothered  like  the  humped  Richard  in  the 
play) .  Or  maybe  some  swirl  of  fancy  blew  upon  him 
as  he  was  spooning  up  his  breakfast,  which  he  must 
set  down  in  an  essay  before  the  matter  cool.  Or  an 

>-  72  


TUNES  FOR  SPRING 


epic  may  have  thumped  within  him.  Let  us  hope  that 
his  thoughts  this  cool  spring  morning  have  not  been 
heated  to  such  bloody  purpose  that  he  has  killed  a 
score  of  men  upon  his  page,  and  that  it  is  with  the 
black  gore  of  the  ink-pot  on  him  that  he  has  called 
for  his  boots  to  face  the  world.  You  remember  the 
fellow  who  kills  him  "some  six  or  seven  dozens  of 
Scots  at  a  breakfast,  washes  his  hands,  and  says  to 
his  wife,  'Fie  upon  this  quiet  life!  I  want  work.' ' 

Such  ferocity  should  not  sully  this  fair  May  morn 
ing,  when  there  are  sounds  only  of  carpet-beating, 
the  tinkle  of  the  man  who  is  out  to  grind  your  knives 
and  the  recurrent  melody  of  the  connoisseur  of  rags 
and  bottles  who  stands  in  his  cart  as  he  drives  his  lean 
and  pointed  horse.  At  the  cry  of  this  perfumed 
Brummel — if  you  be  not  gone  in  years  too  far — as 
often  as  he  prepares  to  shout  the  purpose  of  his  quest, 
you'll  put  a  question  to  him,  "Hey,  there,  what  do 
you  feed  your  wife  on?"  And  then  his  answer 
will  come  pat  to  your  expectation,  "Pa-a-a-per 
Ra-a-a-gs,  Pa-a-a-per  Ra-a-a-gs!"  If  the  persist 
ence  of  youth  be  in  you  and  the  belief  that  a  jest 
becomes  better  with  repetition — like  beans  nine  days 
cold  within  the  pot — you  will  shout  your  question 
until  he  turns  the  corner  and  his  answer  is  lost  in  the 
noises  of  the  street.  "Adieu!  Adieu!  thy  plaintive 
anthem  fades — " 

73 


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


To  this  day  I  think  of  a  rag-picker's  wife  as  dining 
sparingly  out  of  a  bag — not  with  her  head  inside  like 
a  horse,  but  thrusting  her  scrawny  arm  elbow  deep 
to  stir  the  pottage,  and  sprinkling  salt  and  pepper 
on  for  nicer  flavor.  Following  such  preparation 
she  will  fork  it  out  like  macaroni,  with  her  head 
thrown  back  to  present  the  wider  orifice.  If  her 
husband's  route  lies  along  the  richer  streets  she  will 
have  by  way  of  tidbit  for  dessert  a  piece  of  chewy 
velvet,  sugared  and  buttered  to  a  tenderness. 

But  what  is  this  jingling  racket  that  comes  upon 
the  street?  Bless  us,  it's  a  hurdy-gurdy.  The  hurdy- 
gurdy,  I  need  hardly  tell  you,  belongs  to  the  organ 
family.  This  family  is  one  of  the  very  oldest  and 
claims  descent,  I  believe,  from  the  god  Pan.  How 
ever,  it  accepted  Christianity  early  and  has  sent  many 
a  son  within  the  church  to  pipe  divinity.  But  the 
hurdy-gurdy — a  younger  son,  wild,  and  a  bit  of  a 
pagan  like  its  progenitor — took  to  the  streets.  In 
its  life  there  it  has  acquired,  among  much  rascality, 
certain  charming  vices  that  are  beyond  the  capacity 
of  its  brother  in  the  loft,  however  much  we  may 
admire  the  deep  rumble  of  his  Sabbath  utterance. 

The  world  has  denied  that  chanticleer  proclaims 
the  day.  But  as  far  as  I  know  no  one  has  had  the 
insolence  to  deny  the  street-organ  as  the  proper 
herald  of  the  spring.  Without  it  the  seasons  would 

m 74  . 


TUNES  FOR  SPRING 


halt.  Though  science  lay  me  by  the  heels,  I'll  assert 
that  the  crocus,  which  is  a  pioneer  on  the  windy  bor 
derland  of  March,  would  not  show  its  head  except  on 
the  sounding  of  the  hurdy-gurdy.  I'll  not  deny  that 
flowers  pop  up  their  heads  afield  without  such  call, 
that  the  jack-in-the-pulpit  speaks  its  maiden  sermon 
on  some  other  beckoning  of  nature.  But  in  the  city 
it  is  the  hurdy-gurdy  that  gives  notice  of  the  turning 
of  the  seasons.  On  its  sudden  blare  I've  seen  the 
green  stalk  of  the  daffodil  jiggle.  If  the  tune  be  of 
sufficient  rattle  and  prolonged  to  the  giving  of  the 
third  nickel,  before  the  end  is  reached  there  will  be 
seen  a  touch  of  yellow. 

Whether  this  follows  from  the  same  cause  as 
attracts  the  children  to  flatten  their  noses  on  the 
windows  and  calls  them  to  the  curb  that  they  put 
their  ears  close  upon  the  racket  that  no  sweetest 
sound  be  lost,  is  a  deep  question  and  not  to  be  lightly 
answered.  In  the  sound  there  is  promise  of  the  days 
to  come  when  circuses  will  be  loosed  upon  the  land 
and  elephants  will  go  padding  by — with  eyes  looking 
around  for  peanuts.  Why  this  biggest  of  all  beasts, 
this  creature  that  looms  above  you  like  a  crustaceous 
dinosaur — to  use  long  words  without  squinting  too 
closely  on  their  meaning — why  this  behemoth  with 
the  swishing  trunk,  should  eat  peanuts,  contemptible 
peanuts,  lies  so  deep  in  nature  that  the  mind  turns 


75 


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


dizzy.  It  is  small  stuff  to  feed  valor  on — a  penny's 
worth  of  food  in  such  a  mighty  hulk.  Whatever  the 
lion  eats  may  turn  to  lion,  but  the  elephant  strains 
the  proverb.  He  might  swallow  you  instead,  breeches, 


hat  and  suspenders — if  you  be  of  the  older  school  of 
dress  before  the  belt  came  in — and  not  so  much  as 
cough  upon  the  buttons.  And  there  will  be  red  and 
yellow  wagons,  boarded  up  seductively,  as  though 


TUNES  FOR  SPRING 


they  could  show  you,  if  they  would,  snakes  and 
hyenas.  May  be  it  is  best,  you  think — such  things 
lying  in  the  seeds  of  time — to  lay  aside  a  dime  from 
the  budget  of  the  week,  for  one  can  never  be  sure 
against  the  carelessness  of  parents,  and  their  jaded 
appetites. 

But  the  hurdy-gurdy  is  the  call  to  sterner  business 
also.  I  know  an  old  lady  who,  at  the  first  tinkle  from 
the  street,  will  take  off  her  glasses  with  a  finality  as 
though  she  were  never  to  use  them  again  for  the  light 
pleasure  of  reading,  but  intended  to  fill  the  remainder 
of  her  days  with  deeper  purpose.  There  is  a  piece 
of  two-legged  villainy  in  her  employ  by  the  name  of 
William,  and  even  before  the  changing  of  the  tune, 
she  will  have  him  rolling  up  the  rugs  for  the  spring 
cleaning.  There  is  a  sour  rhythm  in  the  fellow  and 
he  will  beat  a  pretty  syncopation  on  them  if  the 
hurdy-gurdy  will  but  stick  to  marching  time.  It  is 
said  that  he  once  broke  the  fabric  of  a  Kermanshah 
in  his  zeal  at  some  crescendo  of  the  Robert  E.  Lee. 
But  he  was  lost  upon  the  valse  and  struck  languidly 
and  out  of  time. 

But  maybe,  Reader,  in  your  youth  you  have  heated 
a  penny  above  a  lamp,  and  with  treacherous  smile 
you  have  come  before  an  open  window.  And  when 
the  son  of  Italy  has  grinned  and  beckoned  for  your 
bounty — the  penny  being  just  short  of  a  molten 


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


state — you  have  thrown  it  to  him.  He  stoops,  he 
feels.  .  .  .  You  have  learned  by  this  how  much  more 
blessed  it  is  to  give  than  to  receive.  Or,  to  dig  deep 
in  the  riot  of  your  youth,  you  have  leased  a  hurdy- 
gurdy  for  a  dollar  and  with  other  devils  of  your  kind 
gone  forth  to  seek  your  fortune.  It's  in  noisier 
fashion  than  when  Goldsmith  played  the  flute  through 
France  for  board  and  bed.  If  you  turned  the  handle 
slowly  and  fast  by  jerks  you  attained  a  rare  tempo 
that  drew  attention  from  even  the  most  stolid 
windows.  But  as  music  it  was  as  naught. 

Down  the  street — it  being  now  noon  and  the  day 
Monday — Mrs.  Y's  washing  will  be  out  to  dry. 
Observe  her  gaunt  replica,  cap-a-pie,  as  immodest 
as  an  advertisement!  In  her  proper  person  she  is 
prodigal  if  she  unmask  her  beauty  to  the  moon.  And 
in  company  with  this,  is  the  woolen  semblance  of  her 
plump  husband.  Neither  of  them  is  shap'd  for 
sportive  tricks :  But  look  upon  them  when  the  music 
starts!  Hand  in  hand  upon  the  line,  as  is  proper 
for  married  folk,  heel  and  toe  together,  one,  two,  and 
a  one,  two,  three.  It  is  the  hurdy-gurdy  that  calls 
to  life  such  revelry.  The  polka  has  come  to  its  own 
again. 

Yet  despite  this  evidence  that  the  hurdy-gurdy  sets 
the  world  to  dancing — like  the  fiddle  in  the  Turkish 
tale  where  even  the  headsman  forgot  his  business — 


7S 


TUNES  FOR  SPRING 


despite  such  evidence  there  are  persons  who  affect  to 
despise  its  melody.  These  claim  such  perceptivity 
of  the  outer  ear  and  such  fineness  of  the  channels  that 
the  tune  is  but  a  clack  when  it  gets  inside.  God  pity 
such !  Ill  not  write  a  word  of  them. 

A  spring  day  is  at  its  best  about  noon.  I  thrust 
this  in  the  teeth  of  those  who  prefer  the  dawn  or  the 
coming  on  of  night.  At  noon  there  are  more  yellow 
wheels  upon  the  street.  The  hammering  on  sheds  is 
at  its  loudest  as  the  time  for  lunch  comes  near.  More 
grocers'  carts  are  rattling  on  their  business.  There 
is  a  better  chance  that  a  load  of  green  wheelbarrows 
may  go  by,  or  a  wagon  of  red  rhubarb.  Then,  too, 
the  air  is  so  warm  that  even  decrepitude  fumbles  on 
the  porch  and  down  the  steps,  with  a  cane  to  poke 
the  weeds. 

If  you  have  luck,  you  may  see  a  "cullud  pusson" 
pushing  a  whitewash  cart  with  altruistic  intent 
toward  all  dusky  surfaces  except  his  own.  Or  maybe 
he  has  nice  appreciation  of  what  color  contrasts  he 
himself  presents  when  the  work  is  midway.  If  he 
wear  the  faded  memory  of  a  silk  hat,  it's  the  better 
picture. 

But  also  the  schools  are  out  and  the  joy  of  life  is 
hissing  up  a  hundred  gullets.  Baseball  has  now  a 
fierceness  it  lacks  at  the  end  of  day.  There  is  wild 
demand  that  "Shorty,  soak  'er  home!"  "Butter- 


79 


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


fingers!"  is  a  harder  insult.  And  meanwhile  a  pop 
corn  wagon  will  be  whistling  a  blithe  if  monotonous 
tune  in  trial  if  there  be  pennies  in  the  crowd.  Or  a 
waffle  may  be  purchased  if  you  be  a  Croesus,  ladled 
exclusively  for  you  and  dropped  on  the  gridiron  with 
a  splutter.  It  is  a  sweet  reward  after  you  have 
knocked  a  three-bagger  and  stolen  home,  and  is  worth 
a  search  in  all  your  eleven  pockets  for  any  last  penny 
that  may  be  skulking  in  the  fuzz. 

Or  perhaps  there  is  such  wealth  upon  your  person 
that  there  is  still  a  restless  jingle.  In  such  case  you 
will  cross  the  street  to  a  shop  that  ministers  to  the 
wants  of  youth.  In  the  window  is  displayed  a  box 
of  marbles — glassies,  commonies,  and  a  larger  browny 
adapted  to  the  purpose  of  "pugging,"  by  reason  of 
the  violence  with  which  it  seems  to  respond  to  the 
impact  of  your  thumb.  Then  there  are  baseballs  of 
graded  excellence  and  seduction.  And  tops.  Time 
is  needed  for  the  choosing  of  a  top.  First  you  stand 
tiptoe  with  nose  just  above  the  glass  and  make  your 
trial  selection.  Pay  no  attention  to  the  color,  for 
that's  the  way  a  girl  chooses!  Black  is  good,  without 
womanish  taint.  Then  you  wiggle  the  peg  for  its 
tightness  and  demand  whether  it  be  screwed  in  like 
an  honest  top.  And  finally,  before  putting  your 
money  down,  you  will  squint  upon  its  roundness. 


80 


TUNES  FOR  SPRING 


Then  slam  the  door  and  yell  your  presence  to  the 
street ! 

Or  do  you  come  on  softer  errand?  In  the  rear  of 
the  shop  is  a  parlor  with  a  base-burner  and  virtuous 
mottoes  on  the  walls — a  cosy  room  with  vases.  And 
here  it  is  they  serve  cream-puffs.  .  .  .  For  safe 
transfer  you  balance  the  puff  in  your  fingers  and 
take  an  enveloping  bite,  emerging  with  a  prolonged 
suck  for  such  particles  as  may  not  have  come  safely 
across,  and  bending  forward  with  stomach  held  in. 
I'll  leave  you  in  this  refreshment;  for  if  the  money 
hold,  you  will  gobble  until  the  ringing  of  the  bell. 

By  this  time,  as  you  may  imagine,  the  person  with 
the  sagging  pockets  whom  I  told  you  of,  has  arrived 
in  the  center  of  the  city  where  already  he  is  practicing 
such  device  of  penny-picking  as  he  may  be  master  of. 


—  81 


RESPECTFULLY  SUBMITTED 

TO  A  MOUKNFUL 


RESPECTFULLY  SUBMITTED 

TO  A  MOUKNFUL 


To  any  one  of  several  editors. 

Dear  Sir:  I  paid  a  visit  to  your  city  several  days 
since  and  humored  myself  with  ambitious  thoughts 
in  the  contemplation  of  your  editorial  windows.  I 
was  tempted  to  rap  at  your  door  and  request  an 
audience  but  modesty  held  me  off.  Once  by  appoint 
ment  I  passed  an  hour  in  your  office  pleasantly  and 
profitably  and  even  so  tardily  do  I  acknowledge  your 
courtesy  and  good-nature.  But  a  beggar  must  choose 
his  streets  carefully  and  must  not  be  seen  too  often 
in  a  neighborhood  as  the  same  door  does  not  always 
offer  pie.  So  this  time  your  brass  knocker  shows  no 
finger-marks  of  mine. 

You  did  not  accept  for  publication  the  last  paper 
I  sent  to  you.  (You  spread  an  infinite  deal  of  sorrow 
in  your  path.)  On  its  return  I  re-read  it  and  now 
confess  to  concurrence  with  your  judgment.  Some 
thing  had  gone  wrong.  It  was  not  as  intended. 
Unlike  Cleopatra,  age  had  withered  it.  Was  I  not 
like  a  cook  whose  dinner  has  been  sent  back  untasted? 
The  best  available  ingredients  were  put  into  that 
confection  and  if  it  did  not  issue  from  the  oven  with 


85 


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


those  savory  whiffs  that  compel  appetite,  my  stove 
is  at  fault.  Perhaps  some  good  old  literary  housewife 
will  tell  me,  disconsolate  among  my  pots  and  pans, 
how  long  an  idea  must  be  boiled  to  be  tender  and  how 
best  to  garnish  a  thought  to  an  editor's  taste? 
And  yet,  sir,  your  manners  are  excellent.  It  was 
Petruchio  who  cried: 

What's  this?     Mutton? — 

'Tis  burnt;  and  so  is  all  the  meat. 

Where  is  the  rascal  cook? 

Manners  have  improved.  In  pleasant  contrast  is 
your  courteous  note,  signifying  the  excellence  of  my 
proffered  pastry,  your  delight  that  you  are  allowed 
to  sniff  and  your  regret  for  lack  of  appetite  and 
abdominal  capacity.  Nevertheless,  the  food  came 
back  and  I  poked  at  the  broken  pieces  mournfully. 
It  is  a  witch's  business  presiding  at  the  caldron  of 
these  things  and  there  is  no  magic  pottage  above  my 
fire. 

And  yet,  kind  sir,  with  your  permission  I  shall 
continue  in  my  ways  and  offer  to  you  from  time  to 
time  such  messes  as  I  have,  hoping  that  some  day 
your  taste  will  deteriorate  to  my  level  or  that  I  shall 
myself  learn  the  witchcraft  and  enter  your  regard. 

Up  to  this  present  time  only  a  few  of  my  papers 
have  been  asked  to  stay.  The  rest  have  gone  the 

86 


RESPECTFULLY  SUBMITTED 


downward  tread  of  your  stair  carpet  and  have  passed 
into  the  night.  My  desk  has  become  a  kind  of 
mausoleum  of  such  as  have  come  home  to  die,  and 
when  I  raise  its  lid  a  silence  falls  on  me  as  on  one  who 
visits  sacred  places. 

There  is,  however,  another  side  of  this.  Certain 
it  is  that  thousands  of  us  who  write  seek  your  recog 
nition  and  regard.  Certain  it  is  that  your  favorable 
judgment  moves  us  to  elation,  and  your  silence  to 
our  merits  urges  us  to  harder  endeavors.  But  for  all 
this,  dear  sir,  and  despite  your  continued  neglect,  we 
are  a  tolerably  happy  crew.  It  may  be  that  our  best 
things  were  never  published — best,  because  we  en 
joyed  them  most,  because  they  recall  the  happiest 
hours  and  the  finest  moods.  They  bring  most  freshly 
to  our  memories  the  influences  of  books  and  friends 
and  the  circumstances  under  which  they  were  written. 
It  is  because  we  lacked  the  skill  to  tame  our  sensations 
to  our  uses,  the  patience  to  do  well  what  we  wished 
to  do  fast,  that  you  rightly  judged  them  unavailable. 
We  do  not  feel  rebellious  and  we  admit  that  you  are 
right.  Only  we  do  not  care  as  much  as  we  did,  for 
most  of  us  are  learning  to  write  for  the  love  of  the 
writing  and  without  an  eye  on  the  medal.  With  no 
livelihood  depending,  with  no  compulsion  of  hours  or 
subject,  under  the  free  anonymity  of  sure  rejection, 
we  have  worked.  It  has  been  a  fine  world,  these  hours 

87  


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


of  study  and  reflection,  and  when  we  assert  that  one 
essay  is  our  best,  we  are  right,  for  it  has  led  us  to 
happiness  and  pleasant  thoughts  and  to  an  interpre 
tation  of  ourselves  and  the  world  that  moves  about 


us.  In  these  best  moods  of  ours,  we  live  and  think 
beyond  our  normal  powers  and  even  come  to  a  distant 
kinship  with  men  far  greater  than  ourselves.  Know 
ing  this,  prudence  only  keeps  us  from  snapping  our 
fingers  at  you  and  marking  each  paper,  as  we  finish 


RESPECTFULLY  SUBMITTED 


it,  "rejected,"  without  the  formality  of  a  trip  to  you, 
and  then  happily  beginning  the  next.  We  are  learn 
ing  to  be  amateurs  and  although  our  names  shall 
never  be  shouted  from  the  housetops,  we  shall  be 
almost  as  content.  Still  will  there  be  the  morning 
hours  of  study  with  sunlight  across  the  floor,  the 
winding  country  roads  of  autumn  with  smells  of  corn- 
stacks  and  burdened  vineyards,  the  fire-lit  hours  of 
evening.  Still  shall  we  write  in  our  gardens  of  a 
summer  afternoon  or  change  the  winter  snowstorm 
that  drives  against  our  windows  into  the  coinage  of 
our  thoughts. 

We  shall  be  independent  and  think  and  write  as 
we  please.  And  although  we  enclose  stamps  for  a 
mournful  recessional,  please  know,  dear  sir,  that  even 
as  you  dictate  your  polite  note  of  refusal,  we  are  hard 
at  it  with  another  paper. 


89 


THE  CHILLY  PRESENCE  OF 
HAIU)-HEADED  PEK5ONS 


THE  CHILLY  PRESENCE  OF 
HAPoD-HEADED  PEKSONS 

It  is  rash  business  scuttling  your  own  ship.  Now 
as  I  am  in  a  way  a  practical  person,  which  is,  I  take 
it,  a  diminutive  state  of  hard-headedness,  any  detrac 
tion  against  hard-headedness  must  appear  as  leveled 
against  myself.  Gimlet  in  hand,  deep  down  amid 
ships,  it  would  look  as  if  I  were  squatted  and  set  on 
my  own  destruction. 

But  by  hard-headed  persons  I  mean  those  beyond 
the  ordinary,  those  so  far  gone  that  a  pin-prick 
through  the  skull  would  yield  not  so  much  as  a  drop 
of  ooze;  persons  whose  brain  convolutions  did  they 
appear  in  fright  at  the  aperture  on  the  insertion  of 
the  pin — like  a  head  at  a  window  when  there  is  a  fire 
on  the  street — would  betray  themselves  as  but  a  kind 
of  cordage.  Such  hard-headedness,  you  will  admit, 
is  of  a  tougher  substance  than  that  which  may  beset 
any  of  us  on  an  occasion  at  the  price  of  meat,  or  on 
the  recurrent  obligations  of  the  too-constant  moon. 

I  am  reasonably  free  from  colds.  I  do  not  fret 
myself  into  a  congestion  if  a  breath  comes  at  me  from 
an  open  window;  or  if  a  swirl  of  wind  puts  its  cold 
fingers  down  my  neck  do  I  lift  my  collar.  Yet  the 
presence  of  a  thoroughly  hard-headed  person  pro- 


93 


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


vokes  a  sneeze.  There  is  a  chilly  vapor  off  him — a 
swampish  miasma — that  puts  me  in  a  snuffling  state, 
beyond  poultice  and  mustard  footbaths.  No  matter 
how  I  huddle  to  the  fire,  my  thoughts  will  congeal 
and  my  purpose  cramp  and  stiffen.  My  conceit  too 
will  be  but  a  shriveled  bladder. 

Several  years  ago  I  knew  a  man  of  extreme  hard- 
headedness.  As  I  recall,  I  was  afflicted  at  the  time — 
indeed,  the  malady  co-existed  with  his  acquaintance — 
with  a  sorry  catarrh  of  the  nasal  passages.  I  can 
remember  still  the  clearings  and  snufflings  that  ob 
truded  in  my  conversation.  For  two  winters  my 
complaint  was  beyond  the  cunning  of  the  doctors. 
Despite  local  applications  and  such  pills  as  they 
thought  fit  to  administer,  still  did  the  snuffling  con 
tinue.  Then  on  a  sudden  my  friend  left  town. 
Consequent  to  which  and  to  the  amazement  of  the 
profession,  the  springs  of  my  disease  dried  up.  As 
this  happened  at  the  beginning  of  the  warm  days  of 
summer,  I  am  loath  to  lay  my  cure  entirely  to  his 
withdrawal,  yet  there  was  a  nice  jointry  of  time.  My 
acquaintance  thereafter  dropped  to  an  infrequent, 
statistical  letter,  against  which  I  have  in  time  proofed 
myself.  But  the  catarrh  has  ceased  except  when  some 
faint  thought  echoes  from  the  past,  at  which  again, 
as  in  the  older  days,  I  am  forced  to  blow  a  passage 
in  the  channel  for  verbal  navigation. 


94 


HARD-HEADED  PERSONS 


This  man's  interest  in  life  was  oil.  It  oozed  from 
the  ventages  of  his  talk.  If  he  looked  on  the  map  of 
this  fair  world,  with  its  mountains  like  caterpillars 
dozing  on  the  page — for  so  do  maps  present  them 
selves  to  my  fancy — he  would  see  merely  the  blue 
print  and  huge  specification  of  oil  production  and 
consumption.  The  dotted  cities  would  suggest  no 
more  than  agencies  in  its  distribution,  and  they  would 
be  pegged  in  many  colors — as  is  the  custom  of  our 
business  efficiency — by  way  of  base  symbolism  of 
their  rank  and  pretense;  the  wide  oceans  themselves 
would  be  merely  courses  for  his  tank  ships  to  bustle 
on  and  leave  a  greasy  trail.  Really,  contrary  to  my 
own  experience  and  sudden  cure,  one  might  think 
that  such  an  oleaginous  stream  of  talk,  if  directed  in 
atomizer  fashion  against  the  nostrils  of  the  listener, 
would  serve  as  a  healing  emulsion  for  the  complaint 
I  then  suffered  with. 

Be  these  things  as  they  may,  what  I  can  actually 
vouch  for  is  that  when  this  fellow  had  set  himself 
and  opened  a  volley  of  facts  on  me,  I  was  shamed  to 
silence.  There  was  a  spaciousness,  a  planetary  sweep 
and  glittering  breadth  that  shriveled  me.  The  com 
modity  which  I  dispensed  was  but  used  around  the 
corner,  with  a  kej^  turned  upon  it  at  the  shadowy  end 
of  day  against  its  intrusion  on  the  night.  But  his  oil, 
all  day  long  and  all  night  too,  was  swishing  in  its 


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


tanks  on  the  course  to  Zanzibar.  And  all  the  fretted 
activity  of  the  earth  was  tributary  to  his  purpose. 
How  like  an  untrimmed  smoky  night-candle  did  my 
ambition  burn!  If  I  chanced  to  think  in  thousands 
it  was  a  strain  upon  me.  My  cerebrum  must  have 
throbbed  itself  to  pieces  upon  the  addition  of  another 
cypher.  But  he  marshaled  his  legions  and  led  them 
up  and  down,  until  it  dazed  me.  I  was  no  better  than 
some  cobbler  with  a  fiddle,  crooked  and  intent  to  the 
twanging  of  his  E  string,  while  the  great  Napoleon 
thundered  by. 

The  secret  channels  of  the  earth  and  the  fullness 
thereof  made  a  joyful  gurgle  in  his  thoughts.  And 
if  he  ever  wandered  in  the  country  and  ever  saw  a 
primrose  on  the  river's  brim — which  I  consider 
unlikely,  his  attention  being  engaged  at  the  moment 
on  figuring  the  cost  of  oil  barrels,  with  special  consid 
eration  for  the  price  of  bungs — if  this  man  ever  did 
see  a  primrose,  would  it  have  been  a  yellow  primrose 
to  him  and  nothing  more?  Bless  your  dear  eyes,  it 
would  have  been  a  compound  of  by-products — para- 
fine,  wax-candles,  cup-grease,  lamp-black,  beeswax 
and  peppermint  drops — not  to  mention  its  proper 
distillation  into  such  rare  odors  as  might  be  sold  at 
so  much  a  bottle  to  jobbers,  and  a  set  price  at  retail, 
with  best  legal  talent  to  avoid  the  Sherman  Act. 

96  . 


HARD-HEADED  PERSONS 


This  man  has  lived — my  spleen  rises  at  the 
thought — in  many  of  the  capitals  of  Europe.  For 
six  months  at  a  time  he  has  walked  around  one  end 
of  the  Louvre  on  his  way  home  at  night  without  once 
putting  his  head  inside.  Indeed,  it  is  probable  he 
hasn't  noticed  the  building,  or  if  he  has,  thinks  it  is  an 
arsenal.  Now  in  all  humility,  and  unbuttoned,  as  it 
were,  for  a  spanking  by  whomsoever  shall  wish  to 
give  it,  I  must  confess  that  I  myself  have  no  great 
love  for  the  Louvre,  regarding  it  somewhat  as  an 
endurance  test  for  tired  tourists,  a  kind  of  blow-in- 
the-nozzle- and- watch-the- dial-mount-up  contrivance, 
as  at  a  country  fair.  And  so  I  am  not  sure  but  that 
the  band  playing  in  the  gardens  is  a  better  amuse 
ment  for  a  bright  afternoon,  and  that  a  nursemaid 
in  uniform  with  her  children — bare-legged  tots  with 
fingers  in  the  sand — that  such  sight  is  more  worthy 
of  respect  than  a  dead  Duchess  painted  on  the  wall. 
It  is  but  a  ritualistic  obeisance  I  have  paid  the  gods 
inside.  My  finer  reverence  has  been  for  benches  in 
the  sun  and  the  vagabondage  of  a  bus-top. 

If  ever  my  friend  gets  to  heaven  it  will  be  but 
another  point  for  exportation.  How  closely  he  will 
listen  for  any  squeaking  of  the  Pearly  Gates,  with  a 
nostrum  ready  for  their  dry  complaint!  When  he  is 
once  through  and  safe  (the  other  pilgrims  still 
coming  up  the  hill — for  heaven,  I'm  sure,  will  be  set 

97  


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


on  some  wind-swept  ridge,  with  purple  distance  in 
the  valleys — )  how  he  will  put  his  ear  against  the 
hinge  for  nice  diagnosis  as  to  the  weight  of  oil  that 
will  give  best  result!  How  he  will  wink  upon  the 
gateman  that  he  write  his  order  large! 

Reader,  I  have  sent  you  off  upon  a  wrong  direction. 
I  have  twisted  the  wooden  finger  at  the  crossroads. 
The  man  of  oil  does  not  exist.  He  is  a  piece  of  fiction 
with  which  to  point  a  moral.  Pig-iron  or  cotton-cloth 
would  have  served  as  well ;  anything,  in  fact,  whereon, 
by  too  close  squinting,  one  may  blunt  his  sight. 

We  have  all  observed  a  growing  tendency  in  many 
persons  to  put,  as  it  were,  electric  lights  in  all  the 
corners  and  attics  of  their  brains,  until  it  is  too  much 
a  rarity  to  find  any  one  who  will  admit  a  twilight  in 
his  whole  establishment.  This  is  carrying  mental 
housekeeping  too  far.  I  will  confess  that  I  prefer  a 
light  at  the  foot  of  the  back  stairs,  where  the  steps 
are  narrow  at  the  turn,  for  Annie  is  precious  to  us. 
I  will  confess,  also,  that  it  is  well  to  have  a  switch  in 
the  kitchen  to  throw  light  in  the  basement,  on  the 
chance  that  the  wood-box  may  get  empty  before  the 
evening  has  spent  itself.  There  is  comfort,  too,  in  not 
being  forced  to  go  darkling  to  bed,  like  Childe  Roland 
to  the  tower,  but  to  put  out  the  light  from  the  floor 
above.  But  we  are  carrying  this  business  too  far  in 
mental  concerns.  Here  is  properly  a  place  for  a  rare 


98 


HARD-HEADED  PERSONS 


twilight.     It  is  not  well  that  a  man  should  always 
flare  himself  like  a  lighted  ballroom. 

Much  of  our  best  mental  stuff — if  you  exclude  the 
harsher  grindings  of  our  business  hours — fades  in  too 
coarse  a  light.  'Tis  a  brocade  that  for  best  preserva 
tion  must  not  be  hung  always  in  the  sun.  There  must 
be  regions  in  you  unguessed  at — cornered  and  shad 
owed  places — recesses  to  be  shown  at  peep  of  finger 
width,  yielding  only  to  the  knock  of  fancy,  dim 
sequesterings  tucked  obscurely  from  the  noises  of  the 
world,  where  one  must  be  taken  by  the  hand  and 
led — dusky  closets  beyond  the  common  use.  It  is  in 
such  places — your  finger  on  your  lips  and  your  feet 
a-tiptoe  on  the  stairs — that  you  will  hide  away  from 
baser  uses  the  stowage  of  moonlight  stuff  and  such 
other  gaseous  and  delightful  foolery  as  may  lie  in 
your  inheritance. 


99 


HOOPSKIPJTS    fr  OTHER, 
LIVELY    HATTED 


t 


HOOPSKIKJS    fr  OTHER, 
LIVELY    MATTEL 


Several  months  ago  I  had  occasion  to  go  through 
a  deserted  "mansion."  It  was  a  gaunt  building  with 
long  windows  and  it  sat  in  a  great  yard.  Over  the 
windows  were  painted  scrolls,  like  eyebrows  lifted 
in  astonishment.  Whatever  was  the  cause  of  this,  it 
has  long  since  departed,  for  it  is  thirty  years  since 
the  building  was  tenanted.  It  would  seem  as  if  it 
fell  asleep — for  so  the  blinds  and  the  drawn  curtains 
attest — before  the  lines  of  this  first  astonishment 
were  off  its  face.  I  am  told  that  the  faces  of  men 

103 


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


dead  in  battle  show  in  similar  fashion  the  marks  of 
conflict.  But  there  is  a  shocked  expression  on  the 
face  of  this  house  as  if  a  scandal  were  on  the  street. 
It  is  crying,  as  it  were,  "Fie,  shame!"  upon  its 
neighbors. 

Inside  there  are  old  carpets  and  curtains  which  spit 
dust  at  you  if  you  touch  them.  (Is  there  not  some 
fabulous  animal  which  does  the  same,  thereby  to 
escape  in  the  mirk  it  has  itself  created?)  Most  of  the 
furniture  has  been  removed,  but  here  and  there  bulky 
pieces  remain,  an  antique  sideboard,  maybe  too  large 
to  be  taken  away;  like  Robinson  Crusoe's  boat,  too 
heavy  to  be  launched.  In  each  room  is  a  chandelier 
for  gas,  resplendent  as  though  Louis  XV  had  come 
again  to  life,  with  tinkling  glass  pendants  and 
globules  interlinked,  like  enormous  Kohinoors. 

Down  in  the  kitchen — which  is  below  stairs  as  in 
an  old  English  comedy — you  can  see  the  place  where 
the  range  stood.  And  there  are  smoky  streaks  upon 
the  walls  that  may  have  come  from  the  coals  of 
ancient  feasts.  If  you  sniff,  and  put  your  fancy  in 
it — it  is  an  unsavory  thought — it  is  likely  even  that 
you  can  get  the  stale  smell  from  such  hospitable 
preparation. 

From  the  first  floor  to  the  second  is  a  flaring  stair 
case  with  a  landing  where  opulence  can  get  its 
breath.  And  then  there  is  a  choice  of  upward  steps, 

104 


HOOPSKIRTS  AND  OTHER  LIVELY  MATTER 


either  to  the  right  or  left  as  your  wish  shall  direct. 
And  on  each  side  is  a  balustrade  unbroken  by  posts 
from  top  to  bottom.  Now  the  first  excitement  of  my 
own  life  was  on  such  a  rail,  which  seemed  a  funicular 
made  for  my  special  benefit.  The  seats  of  all  my 
early  breeches,  I  have  been  told,  were  worn  shiny 
thereon,  like  a  rubbed  apple.  These  descents  were 
executed  slowly  at  the  turn,  but  gathered  wild  speed 
on  the  straight-away.  There  was  slight  need  for 
Annie  to  dust  the  "balusters." 

An  old  house  is  strong  in  its  class  distinctions. 
There  is  a  front  part  and  a  back  part.  To  know  the 
front  part  is  to  know  it  in  its  spacious  and  generous 
moods.  But  somewhere  you  will  find  a  door  and 
there  will  be  three  steps  behind  it,  and  poof! — you 
will  be  prying  into  the  darker  life  of  the  place.  In 
this  particular  house  of  which  I  write,  it  was  as  if  the 
back  rooms,  the  back  halls  and  the  innumerable 
closets  had  been  playing  at  hide  and  seek  and  had 
not  been  told  when  the  game  was  over,  and  so  still 
kept  to  their  hiding  places.  It  is  in  such  obscure 
closets  that  a  family  skeleton,  if  it  be  kept  at  all, 
might  be  kept  most  safely.  There  would  be  slight 
hazard  of  its  discovery  if  the  skeleton  restrained 
itself  from  clanking,  as  is  the  whim  of  skeletons. 

It  was  in  the  back  part  of  this  house  that  I  came 
on  a  closet,  where,  after  all  these  years,  women's 

— • 105  


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


garments  were  still  hanging.  A  lighted  match — for 
I  am  no  burglar  with  a  bull's-eye  as  you  might  sus 
pect — displayed  to  me  an  array  of  petticoats — the 
flounced  kind  that  gladdened  the  eye  of  woman  in 
those  remote  days — also  certain  gauzy  matters  which 
the  writers  of  the  eighteenth  century  called  by  the 
name  of  smocks.  Besides  these,  there  were  suspended 
from  hooks  those  sartorial  deceits,  those  lying  mounds 
of  fashion,  that  false  incrustation  on  the  surface  of 
nature,  known  as  "bustles."  Also,  there  was  a  hoop- 
skirt  curled  upon  the  floor,  and  an  open  barrel  with 
a  stowage  of  books — a  novel  or  two  of  E.  P.  Roe, 
the  poems  of  John  Saxe,  a  table  copy  of  Whittier 
in  padded  leather,  an  album  with  a  flourish  on  the 
cover — these  at  the  top  of  the  heap. 

I  choose  to  trace  the  connection  between  the  styles 
of  dress  and  books,  and — where  my  knowledge 
serves — to  show  the  effect  of  political  change  on  both. 
For  it  is  written  that  when  Constantinople  fell  in 
the  fifteenth  century  Turkish  costumes  became  the 
fashion  through  western  Europe — maybe  a  flash  of 
eastern  color  across  the  shoulders  or  an  oriental  buckle 
for  the  shoes.  Similarly  the  Balkan  War  gave  us 
hints  for  dress.  Many  styles  to-day  are  marks  of 
our  kinship  with  the  East.  These  are  mere  broken 
promptings  for  your  own  elaboration.  And  it  seems 
to  sort  with  this  theory  of  close  relation,  that  the 


106 


HOOPSK1RTS  AND  OTHER  LIVELY  MATTER 

generation  which  flared  and  flounced  its  person  until 
nature  was  no  more  than  a  kernel  in  the  midst,  which 
puffed  itself  like  a  muffin  with  but  a  finger-point  of 
dough  within,  should  be  the  generation  that  particu 
larly  delighted  in  romantic  literature,  in  which  like 
wise  nature  is  so  prudently  wrapped  that  scarce  an 
ankle  can  show  itself.  It  would  be  a  nice  inquiry 
whether  the  hoopskirt  was  not  introduced — it  was 
midway  in  the  eighteenth  century,  I  think — at  the 
time  of  the  first  budding  of  romantic  sentiment.  The 
"Man  of  Feeling"  came  after  and  Anne  Radcliffe's 
novels.  Is  it  not  significant  also,  in  these  present 
days  of  Russian  novels  and  naked  realism,  that 
costume  should  advance  sympathetically  to  the  edge 
of  modesty? 


There  is  something,  however,  to  be  said  in  favor 
of  romantic  books,  despite  the  horrible  examples  at 
the  top  of  this  barrel.  Perhaps  our  own  literature 


107 


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


shivers  in  too  thin  a  shift.  For  once  upon  a  time 
somewhere  between  the  age  of  bustles  and  ourselves 
there  were  writers  who  ended  their  stories  "and  they 
were  married  and  lived  happily  ever  after."  Whereas 
at  this  present  day  stories  are  begun  "They  were 
married  and  straightway  things  began  to  go  to  the 
devil."  And  for  my  own  part  I  have  read  enough 
of  family  quarrels.  I  am  tired  of  the  tune  upon  the 
triangle  and  I  am  ready  for  softer  flutings.  When 
I  visit  my  neighbors,  I  want  them  to  make  a  decent 
pretense.  It  was  Charles  Lamb  who  found  his 
married  friends  too  loving  in  his  presence,  but  let  us 
not  go  to  extremes !  And  so,  after  I  have  read  a  few 
books  of  marital  complication,  I  yearn  for  the  old- 
fashioned  couple  in  the  older  books  who  went  hand 
in  hand  to  old  age.  At  this  minute  there  is  a  black 
book  that  looks  down  upon  me  like  a  crow.  It  is 
"Crime  and  Punishment."  I  read  it  once  when  I  was 
ill,  and  I  nearly  died  of  it.  I  confess  that  after  a  very 
little  acquaintance  with  such  books  I  am  tempted  to 
sequester  them  on  a  top  shelf  somewhere,  beyond 
reach  of  tiptoe,  where  they  may  brood  upon  their 
banishment  and  rail  against  the  world. 

Encyclopedias  and  the  tonnage  of  learning  prop 
erly  take  their  places  on  the  lowest  shelves,  for  their 
lump  and  mass  make  a  fitting  foundation.  I  must 
say,  however,  that  the  habit  of  the  dictionary  of 


108 


HOOPSKIRTS  AND  OTHER  LIVELY  MATTER 

secreting  itself  in  the  darkest  corner  of  the  lowest 
shelf  contributes  to  general  illiteracy.  I  have  known 
families  wrangle  for  ten  minutes  on  the  meaning  of 
a  word  rather  than  lift  this  laggard  from  its  depths. 
Be  that  as  it  may,  the  novels  and  poetry  should  be 
on  the  fifth  shelf  from  the  bottom,  just  off  the  end 
of  the  nose,  so  to  speak. 

Now,  the  vinegar  cruet  is  never  the  largest  vessel 
in  the  house.  So  by  strict  analogy,  sour  books — the 
kind  that  bite  the  temper  and  snarl  upon  your  better 
moods — should  be  in  a  small  minority.  Do  not  mis 
take  me!  I  shall  find  a  place,  maybe,  for  a  volume 
or  two  of  Nietzsche,  and  all  of  Ibsen  surely.  I  would 
admit  uplift  too,  for  my  taste  is  catholic.  And  there 
will  be  other  books  of  a  kind  that  never  rouse  a 
chuckle  in  you.  For  these  are  necessary  if  for  no 
more  than  as  alarm  clocks  to  awake  us  from  our 
dreaming  self-content.  But  in  the  main  I  would  not 
have  books  too  insistent  upon  the  wrongs  of  the  world 
and  the  impossibility  of  remedy. 

I  confess  to  a  liking  for  tales  of  adventure,  for 
wrecks  in  the  South  Seas,  for  treasure  islands,  for 
pirates  with  red  shirts.  Mark  you,  how  a  red  shirt 
lights  up  a  dull  page!  It  is  like  a  scarlet  leaf  on  a 
gray  November  day.  Also  I  have  a  weakness  for  the 
bang  of  pistols,  round  oaths  and  other  desperate  ras 
cality.  In  such  stories  there  is  no  small  mincing.  A 

109  


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


villain  proclaims  himself  on  his  first  appearance — 
unless  John  Silver  be  an  exception — and  retains  his 
villainy  until  the  rope  tightens  about  his  neck  in  the 
last  chapter  but  one;  the  very  last  being  set  aside  for 
the  softer  commerce  of  the  hero  and  heroine. 

You  will  remember  that  about  twenty  years  ago  a 
fine  crop  of  such  stories  came  out  of  the  Balkans. 
At  that  time  it  was  a  dim,  unknown  land,  a  kind  of 
novelists'  Coast  of  Bohemia,  an  appropriate  setting 
for  distressed  princesses.  I'll  hazard  a  guess  that 
there  was  not  a  peak  in  all  that  district  on  which 
there  was  not  some  Black  Rudolph's  castle,  not  a  road 
that  did  not  clack  romantically  with  horses'  hoofs 
on  bold  adventure.  But  the  wars  have  changed  all 
this  by  bringing  too  sharp  a  light  upon  the  dim 
scenery  of  this  pageantry,  and  swash-bucklery  is  all 
but  dead. 

To  confess  the  truth,  it  is  in  such  stories  that  I  like 
horses  best.  In  real  life  I  really  do  not  like  them  at 
all.  I  am  rather  afraid  of  them  as  of  strange  organ 
isms  that  I  can  neither  start  with  ease  nor  stop  with 
safety.  It  is  not  that  I  never  rode  or  drove  a  horse. 
I  have  achieved  both.  But  I  don't  urge  him  to 
deviltry.  Instead  I  humor  his  whims.  Some  horses 
even  I  might  be  fond  of.  Give  me  a  horse  that  nears 
the  age  of  slippered  pantaloon  and  is,  moreover, 
phlegmatic  in  his  tastes,  and  then,  as  the  stories  say 

no 


HOOPSKIRTS  AND  OTHER  LIVELY  MATTER 

"with  tightened  girth  and  feet  well  home" — but 
enough!  I  must  not  be  led  into  boasting. 

But  in  these  older  stories  I  love  a  horse.  With 
what  fire  do  his  hoofs  ring  out  in  the  flight  of  elope 
ment!  "Pursuit's  at  the  turn.  Speed  my  brave 
Dobbin!"  And  when  the  Prince  has  kissed  the 
Princess*  hand,  you  know  that  the  story  is  nearly  over 
and  that  they  will  live  happily  ever  after.  Of  course 
there  is  always  someone  to  suggest  that  Cinderella 
was  never  happy  after  she  left  her  ashes  and  pump 
kins  and  went  to  live  in  the  palace.  But  this  is  idle 
gossip.  Even  if  there  were  "occasional  bickerings" 
between  her  and  the  Prince,  this  is  as  Lamb  says  it 
should  be  among  "near  relations." 

I  nearly  died  of  "Crime  and  Punishment."  These 
Russian  novelists  have  too  distressful  a  point  of  view. 
They  remind  me  too  painfully  of  the  poem — 

It  was  dreadful  dark 
In  that  doleful  ark 
When  the  elephants  went  to  bed. 

Doubtless  if  the  lights  burn  high  in  you,  it  is  well  to 
read  such  gloom  as  is  theirs.  Perhaps  they  depict 
life.  These  things  may  be  true  and  if  so,  we  ought 
to  know  them.  At  the  best,  theirs  is  a  real  attempt 
"to  cleanse  the  foul  body  of  the  infected  world."  But 
if  there  be  a  blast  without  and  driving  rain,  must  we 

• —  in _ 


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


be  always  running  to  the  door  to  get  it  in  our  face? 
Will  not  one  glance  in  the  evening  be  enough?  Shall 
we  be  always  exposing  ourselves  "to  feel  what 
wretches  feel"?  It  is  true  that  we  are  too  content 
under  the  suffering  of  others,  but  it  is  true,  also,  that 
too  few  of  us  were  born  under  a  laughing  star.  Gray 
shadows  fall  too  often  on  our  minds.  A  sunny  road 
is  the  best  to  travel  by.  Furthermore — and  here  is 
a  deep  platitude — there  is  many  a  man  who  sobs  upon 
a  doleful  book,  who  to  the  end  of  time  will  blithely 
underpay  his  factory  girls.  His  grief  upon  the  book 
is  diffuse.  It  ranges  across  the  mountains  of  the 
world,  but  misses  the  nicer  point  of  his  own  conduct. 
Is  this  not  sentimentally  like  the  gray  yarn  hysteria 
under  the  spell  of  which  wealthy  women  clicked  their 
needles  in  public  places  for  the  soldiers  ?  Let  me  not 
underrate  the  number  of  garments  that  they  made — 
surely  a  single  machine  might  produce  as  many 
within  a  week.  But  there  is  danger  that  their  work 
was  only  a  sentimental  expression  of  their  world- 
grief.  I'll  sink  to  depths  of  practicality  and  claim 
that  a  pittance  from  their  allowances  would  have 
bought  more  and  better  garments  in  the  market. 

Perhaps  we  read  too  many  tragical  books.  In  the 
decalogue  the  inheritance  of  evil  is  too  strongly  visited 
on  the  children  to  the  third  and  fourth  generation, 
and  there  is  scant  sanction  as  to  the  inheritance  of 


HOOPSK1RTS  AND  OTHER  LIVELY  MATTER 

goodness.  It  is  the  sins  of  the  fathers  that  live  in  the 
children.  It  is  the  evil  that  men  do  that  lives  after 
them,  while  the  good,  alas,  is  oft  interred  with  their 
bones.  If  a  doleful  book  stirs  you  up  to  life,  for 
God's  sake  read  it!  If  it  wraps  you  all  about  as  in 
a  winding  sheet  for  death,  you  had  best  have  none 
of  it. 


I  had  now  burned  several  matches — and  my  fingers 
too — in  the  inspection  of  the  closet  where  the  women's 
garments  hung.  And  it  came  on  me  as  I  poked  the 
books  within  the  barrel  and  saw  what  silly  books 
were  there,  that  perhaps  I  have  overstated  my  posi 
tion.  It  would  be  a  lighter  doom,  I  thought,  to  be 


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


rived  and  shriveled  by  the  lightning  flash  of  a  modern 
book,  even  "Crime  and  Punishment,"  than  stultified 
by  such  as  were  within. 

Then,  like  the  lady  of  the  poem 

Having  sat  me  down  upon  a  mound 
To  think  on  life, 

I  concluded  that  my  views  were  sound 
And  got  me  up  and  turned  me  round, 
And  went  me  home  again. 


114 


ON    TRAVELING 


ON    TRAVELING* 

In  old  literature  life  was  compared  to  a  journey, 
and  wise  men  rejoiced  to  question  old  men  because, 
like  travelers,  they  knew  the  sloughs  and  roughnesses 
of  the  long  road.  Men  arose  with  the  sun,  and 
toddled  forth  as  children  on  the  day's  journey  of 
their  lives,  and  became  strong  to  endure  the  heaviness 
of  noonday.  They  strived  forward  during  the  hours 
of  early  afternoon  while  their  sun's  ambition  was  hot, 
and  then  as  the  heat  cooled  they  reached  the  crest 
of  the  last  hill,  and  their  road  dipped  gently  to  the 
valley  where  all  roads  end.  And  on  into  the  quiet 
evening,  until,  at  last,  they  lie  down  in  that  shadowed 
valley,  and  await  the  long  night. 


117 


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


This  figure  has  lost  its  meaning,  for  we  now  travel 
by  rail,  and  life  is  expressed  in  terms  of  the  railway 
time-table.  As  has  been  said,  we  leave  and  arrive 
at  places,  but  we  no  longer  travel.  Consequently 
we  cannot  understand  the  hubbub  that  Marco 
Polo  must  have  caused  among  his  townsmen  when 
he  swaggered  in.  He  and  his  crew  were  bronzed  by 
the  sun,  were  dressed  as  Tartars,  and  could  speak 
their  native  Italian  with  difficulty.  To  convince  the 
Venetians  of  their  identity,  Marco  gave  a  magnificent 
entertainment,  at  which  he  and  his  officers  received, 
clad  in  oriental  dress  of  red  satin.  Three  times 
during  the  banquet  they  changed  their  dress,  dis 
tributing  the  discarded  garments  among  their  guests. 
At  last,  the  rough  Tartar  clothing  worn  on  their 
travels  was  displayed  and  then  ripped  open.  Within 
was  a  profusion  of  jewels  of  the  Orient,  the  gifts  of 
Kublai  Khan  of  Cathay.  The  proof  was  regarded 
as  perfect,  and  from  that  time  Marco  was  acknowl 
edged  by  his  countrymen,  and  loaded  with  distinc 
tion.  When  Drake  returned  from  the  Straits  of 
Magellan  and,  powdered  and  beflunkied,  told  his  lies 
at  fashionable  London  dinners,  no  doubt  he  was 
believed.  And  his  crew,  let  loose  on  the  beer-shops, 
gathered  each  his  circle  of  listeners,  drank  at  his 
admirers'  expense,  and  yarned  far  into  the  night. 

118  • 


ON  TRAVELING 


It  was  worth  one's  while  to  be  a  traveler  in  those 
times. 

But  traveling  has  fallen  to  the  yellow  leaf.  The 
greatest  traveler  is  now  the  brakeman.  Next  is  he 
who  sells  colored  cotton.  A  poor  third  pursues  health 
and  flees  from  restlessness.  Wise  men  have  ceased 
to  question  travelers,  except  to  inquire  of  the  arrival 
of  trains  and  of  the  comfort  of  hotels. 

To-day  I  am  a  thousand  miles  from  home.  From 
my  window  the  world  stretches  massive,  homewards. 
Even  though  I  stood  on  the  most  distant  range  of 
mountains  and  looked  west,  still  I  would  look  on  a 
world  that  contained  no  suggestion  of  home;  and  if 
I  leaped  to  that  horizon  and  the  next,  the  result  would 
be  the  same — so  insignificant  would  be  the  relative 
distance  accomplished.  And  here  I  am  set  down  with 
no  knowledge  of  how  I  came.  There  was  a  con 
tinuous  jar  and  the  noise  of  motion.  We  passed  a 
barn  or  two,  I  believe,  and  on  one  hillside  animals 
were  frightened  from  their  grazing  as  we  passed. 
There  were  the  cluttered  streets  of  several  cities  and 
villages.  There  was  a  prodigious  number  of  tele 
graph  poles  going  in  the  opposite  direction,  hell-bent 
as  fast  as  we,  which  poles  considerately  went  at  half 
speed  through  towns,  for  fear  of  hitting  children. 
The  United  States  was  once  an  immense  country,  and 
extended  quite  to  the  sunset.  For  convenience  we 

— 119  


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


have  reduced  its  size,  and  made  it  but  a  map  of  its 
former  self.  Any  section  of  this  map  can  be  unrolled 
and  inspected  in  a  day's  time. 

In  the  books  for  children  is  the  story  of  the  seven- 
league  boots — wonderful  boots,  worth  a  cobbler's 
fortune.  If  a  prince  is  escaping  from  an  ogre,  if  he 
is  eloping  with  a  princess,  if  he  has  an  engagement 
at  the  realm's  frontier  and  the  wires  are  down,  he 
straps  these  boots  to  his  feet  and  strides  the  moun 
tains  and  spans  the  valleys.  For  with  the  clicking 
of  the  silver  buckles  he  has  destroyed  the  dimensions 
of  space.  Length,  breadth  and  depth  are  measured 
for  him  but  in  wishes.  One  wish  and  perhaps  a 
snap  of  the  fingers,  or  an  invocation  to  the  devil  of 
locomotion,  and  he  stands  on  a  mountain-top,  the 
next  range  of  hills  blue  in  the  distance;  another  wish 
and  another  snap  and  he  has  leaped  the  valley. 
Wonderful  boots,  these!  Worth  a  king's  ransom. 
And  this  prince,  too,  as  he  travels  thus  dizzily  may 
remember  one  or  two  barns,  animals  frightened  from 
their  grazing,  and  the  cluttered  streets  nested  in  the 
valley.  When  he  reaches  his  journey's  end  he  will 
be  just  as  wise  and  just  as  ignorant  as  we  who  now 
travel  by  rail  in  magic,  seven-league  fashion.  For 
here  I  am  set  down,  and  all  save  the  last  half-mile  of 
my  path  is  lost  in  the  curve  of  the  mountains.  From 
my  window  I  see  the  green-covered  mountains,  so 


ON  TRAVELING 


different  from  city  streets  with  their  horizon  of 
buildings. 

I  fancy  that,  on  the  memorable  morning  when 
Aladdin's  Palace  was  set  down  in  Africa  after  its 
magic  night's  ride  from  the  Chinese  capital,  a  house 
maid  must  have  gone  to  the  window,  thrown  back 
the  hangings  and  looked  out,  astounded,  on  the  barren 
mountains,  when  she  expected  to  see  only  the  court 
yard  of  the  palace  and  its  swarm  of  Chinese  life. 
She  then  recalled  that  the  building  rocked  gently  in 
the  night,  and  that  she  heard  a  whirling  sound  as  of 
wind.  These  were  the  only  evidences  of  the  devil- 
guided  flight.  Now  she  looked  on  a  new  world,  and 
the  familiar  pagodas  lay  far  to  the  east  within  the 
eye  of  the  rising  sun. 

There  are  summer  evenings  in  my  recollection  when 
I  have  traveled  the  skies,  landing  from  the  sky's  blue 
sea  upon  the  cloud  continent,  and  traversing  its 
mountain  ranges,  its  inland  lakes,  harbors  and  valleys. 
Over  the  wind-swept  ridges  I  have  gone,  watching 
the  world-change,  seeing  ' 

the  hungry  ocean  gain 
Advantage  on  the  Kingdom  of  the  shore, 
And  the  firm  soil  win  of  the  watery  main, 
Increasing  store  with  loss  and  loss  with  store. 

The  greatest  traveler  that  I  know  is  a  little  man, 
slightly  bent,  who  walks  with  a  stick  in  his  garden 

121  


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


or  sits  passive  in  his  library.  Other  friends  have 
boasted  of  travels  in  the  Orient,  of  morningsf  spent 
on  the  Athenian  Acropolis,  of  visiting  the  Theatre  of 
Dionysius,  and  of  hallooing  to  the  empty  seats  that 
re-echoed.  They  warn  me  of  this  and  that  hotel,  and 
advise  me  concerning  the  journey  from  London.  The 
usual  tale  of  travelers  is  that  Athens  is  a  ruin.  I 
have  heard  it  rumored,  for  instance,  that  the  Parthe 
non  marbles  are  in  London,  and  that  the  Parthenon 
itself  has  suffered  from  the  "wreckful  siege  of  batter 
ing  days";  that  the  walls  to  Piraeus  contain  hardly 
one  stone  left  upon  another. 

And  this  sets  me  to  thinking,  for  my  friend  denies 
all  this  with  such  an  air  of  sincerity  that  I  am  almost 
inclined  to  believe  his  word  against  all  the  others. 
The  Athens  he  pictures  is  not  ruinous.  The  Par 
thenon  stands  before  him  as  it  left  the  hand  of 
Phidias.  The  walls  to  Piraeus  stand  high  as  on  that 
morning,  now  almost  forgotten,  when  Athens  awaited 
the  Spartan  attack.  For  him  the  Dionysian  Theatre 
does  not  echo  to  tourists'  shouts,  but  gives  forth  the 
sounds  of  many-voiced  Greek  life.  He  knows,  too, 
the  people  of  Athens.  He  walked  one  day  with 
Socrates  along  the  banks  of  the  Ilissus,  and  after 
wards  visited  him  in  his  prison  when  about  to  drink 
the  hemlock.  It  is  of  the  grandeur  of  Athens  and  her 
sons  that  he  speaks,  .not  of  her  ruins.  The  best  of  his 


122 


ON  TRAVELING 


travels  is  that  he  buys  no  tickets  of  Cook,  nor,  indeed, 
of  any  one,  and  when  he  has  seen  the  cities'  sights,  his 
wife  enters  and  says,  "Isn't  it  time  for  the  bookworm 
to  eat?"  So  he  has  his  American  supper  in  the  next 
room  overlooking  Attica,  so  to  speak. 


123 


THKOUGH  T£  5CUTTLE 
WITH  THE  TINMAN 


THKOUGH  TE  S CUTTLE 
WITH  THE  TINMAN    m 

Yesterday  I  was  on  the  roof  with  the  tinman.  He 
did  not  resemble  the  tinman  of  the  "Wizard  of  Oz" 
or  the  flaming  tinman  of  "Lavengro,"  for  he  wore 
a  derby  hat,  had  a  shiny  seat,  and  smoked  a  ragged 
cigar.  It  was  a  flue  he  was  fixing,  a  thing  of  metal 
for  the  gastronomic  whiffs  journeying  from  the 
kitchen  to  the  upper  airs.  There  was  a  vent  through 
the  roof  with  a  cone  on  top  to  shed  the  rain.  I 
watched  him  from  the  level  cover  of  a  second-story 
porch  as  he  scrambled  up  the  shingles.  I  admire  men 
who  can  climb  high  places  and  stand  upright  and 


127 


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


unmoved  at  the  gutter's  edge.  But  their  bravado 
forces  on  me  unpleasantly  how  closely  I  am  tied 
because  of  dizziness  to  Mother  Earth's  apron  strings. 
These  fellows  who  perch  on  scaffolds  and  flaunt  them 
selves  on  steeple  tops  are  frontiersmen.  They  stand 
as  the  outposts  of  this  flying  globe.  Often  when  I 
observe  a  workman  descend  from  his  eagle's  nest  in 
the  open  steel  frame  of  a  lofty  building,  I  look  into 
his  face  for  some  trace  of  exaltation,  some  message 
from  his  wider  horizon.  You  may  remember  how 
they  gazed  into  Alcestis'  face  when  she  returned 
from  the  House  of  Hades,  that  they  might  find  there 
a  token  of  her  shadowed  journey.  It  is  lucky  that 
I  am  no  taller  than  six  feet;  if  ten,  giddiness  would 
set  in  and  reversion  to  type  on  all  fours.  An  undiz- 
zied  man  is  to  me  as  much  of  a  marvel  as  one  who  in 
his  heart  of  hearts  is  not  afraid  of  a  horse. 

Maybe  after  all,  it  is  just  because  I  am  so  cowardly 
and  dizzy  that  I  have  a  liking  for  high  places  and 
especially  for  roofs.  Although  here  my  people  have 
lived  for  thousands  of  years  on  the  very  rim  of 
things,  with  the  unimagined  miles  above  them  and  the 
glitter  of  Orion  on  their  windows,  so  little  have  I 
learned  of  these  verities  that  I  am  frightened  on  my 
shed  top  and  the  grasses  below  make  me  crouch  in 
terror.  And  yet  to  my  fearful  perceptions  there 
may  be  pleasures  that  cannot  exist  for  the  accus- 


THROUGH  THE  SCUTTLE  WITH  THE  TINMAN 

tomed  and  jaded  senses  of  the  tinman.  Could  he  feel 
stimulus  in  Hugo's  description  of  Paris  from  the 
towers  of  Notre  Dame?  He  is  too  much  the  gargoyle 
himself  for  the  delights  of  dizziness. 

Quite  a  little  could  be  said  about  the  creative  power 
of  gooseflesh.  If  Shakespeare  had  been  a  tinman  he 
could  not  have  felt  the  giddy  height  and  grandeur 
of  the  Dover  Cliffs;  Ibsen  could  not  have  wrought 
the  climbing  of  the  steeple  into  the  crisis  and  calamity 
of  "The  Master  Builder";  Teufelsdrockh  could  not 
have  uttered  his  extraordinary  night  thoughts  above 
the  town  of  Weissnichtwo ;  "Prometheus  Bound" 
would  have  been  impossible.  Only  one  with  at  least 
a  dram  of  dizziness  could  have  conceived  an  "eagle- 
baffling  mountain,  black,  wintry,  dead,  unmeasured." 
In  the  days  when  we  read  Jules  Verne,  was  not  our 
chief  pleasure  found  in  his  marvelous  way  of  suspend 
ing  us  with  swimming  senses  over  some  fearful  abyss; 
wet  and  slippery  crags  maybe,  and  void  and  blackness 
before  us  and  below;  and  then  just  to  give  full  meas 
ure  of  fright,  a  sound  of  running  water  in  the  depths. 
Doesn't  it  raise  the  hair?  Could  a  tinman  have 
written  it? 

But  even  so,  I  would  like  to  feel  at  home  on  my 
own  roof  and  have  a  slippered  familiarity  with  my 
slates  and  spouts.  A  chimney-sweep  in  the  old  days 
doubtless  had  an  ugly  occupation,  and  the  fear  of  a 

129  


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


sooty  death  must  have  been  recurrent  to  him.  But 
what  a  sable  triumph  was  his  when  he  had  cleared  his 
awful  tunnel  and  had  emerged  into  daylight,  bloom 
ing,  as  Lamb  would  say,  in  his  first  tender  nigritude ! 
"I  seem  to  remember,"  he  continues,  "that  a  bad 
sweep  was  once  left  in  a  stack  with  his  brush  to  indi 
cate  which  way  the  wind  blew."  After  observing  the 
tinman  for  a  while,  I  put  on  rubber  shoes  and  slunk 
up  to  the  ridgepole,  the  very  watershed  of  my  sixty- 
foot  kingdom,  my  legs  slanting  into  the  infinities  of 
the  North  and  South.  It  sounds  unexciting  when 
written,  but  there  I  was,  astride  my  house,  up  among 
the  vents  and  exhausts  of  my  former  cloistered  life, 
my  head  outspinning  the  weathercock.  My  Matter- 
horn  had  been  climbed,  "the  pikes  of  darkness  named 
and  stormed."  Next  winter  when  I  sit  below  snug 
by  the  fire  and  hear  the  wind  funneling  down  the 
chimney,  will  not  my  peace  be  deeper  because  I  have 
known  the  heights  where  the  tempest  blows,  and  the 
rain  goes  pattering,  and  the  whirling  tin  cones  go 
mad? 

Right  now,  if  I  dared,  I  would  climb  to  the  roof 
again,  and  I  would  sit  with  my  feet  over  the  edge  and 
crane  forward  and  do  crazy  things  just  because  I 
could.  Then  maybe  my  neighbors  would  mistake  the 
point  of  my  philosophy  and  lock  me  up;  would 
sympathize  with  my  fancies  as  did  Sir  Toby  and 


130 


THROUGH  THE  SCUTTLE  WITH  THE  TINMAN 

Maria  with  Malvolio.  If  one  is  to  escape  bread  and 
water  in  the  basement,  one's  opinions  on  such  slight 
things  as  garters  and  roofs  must  be  kept  dark.  Be 
a  freethinker,  if  you  will,  on  the  devil,  the  deep  sea, 
and  the  sunrise,  but  repress  yourself  in  the  trifles. 

I  like  flat  roofs.  There  is  in  my  town  a  public 
library  on  the  top  story  of  a  tall  building,  and  on  my 
way  home  at  night  I  often  stop  to  read  a  bit  before 
its  windows.  When  my  eyes  leave  my  book  and 
wander  to  the  view  of  the  roofs,  I  fancy  that  the  giant 
hands  of  a  phrenologist  are  feeling  the  buildings  which 
are  the  bumps  of  the  city.  And  listening,  I  seem  to 
hear  his  dictum  "Vanity" ;  for  below  is  the  market  of 
fashion.  The  world  has  sunk  to  ankle  height.  I  sit 
on  the  shoulders  of  the  world,  above  the  tar-and- 
gravel  scum  of  the  city.  And  at  my  back  are  the 
books — the  past,  all  that  has  been,  the  manners  of 
dress  and  thought — they  too  peeping  aslant  through 
these  windows.  Soon  it  will  be  dark  and  this  day  also 
will  be  done  and  burn  its  ceremonial  candles ;  and  the 
roar  from  the  pavement  will  be  the  roar  of  yesterday. 

Astronomy  would  have  come  much  later  if  it  had 
not  been  for  the  flat  roofs  of  the  Orient  and  its  glis 
tening  nights.  In  the  cloudy  North,  where  the  roofs 
were  thatched  or  peaked,  the  philosophers  slept 
indoors  tucked  to  the  chin.  But  where  the  nights 
were  hot,  men,  banished  from  sleep,  watched  the 

— 131  


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


rising  of  the  stars  that  they  might  point  the  hours. 
They  studied  the  recurrence  of  the  star  patterns  until 
they  knew  when  to  look  for  their  reappearance.  It 
was  under  a  cloudless,  breathless  sky  that  the  con 
stellations  were  named  and  their  measures  and  orbits 
allotted.  On  the  flat  roof  of  some  Babylonian  temple 
of  Bel  came  into  life  astrology,  "foolish  daughter  of 
a  wise  mother,"  that  was  to  bind  the  eyes  of  the  world 
for  nearly  two  thousand  years,  the  most  enduring  and 
the  strongest  of  superstitions.  It  was  on  these  roofs, 
too,  that  the  planets  were  first  maligned  as  wanderers, 
celestial  tramps;  and  this  gossip  continued  until 
recent  years  when  at  last  it  appeared  that  they  are 
bodies  of  regular  and  irreproachable  habits,  eccentric 
in  appearance  only,  doing  a  cosmic  beat  with  a  time- 
clock  at  each  end,  which  they  have  never  failed  to 
punch  at  the  proper  moment. 

Somewhere,  if  I  could  but  find  it,  must  exist  a  diary 
of  one  of  these  ancient  astronomers — and  from  it  I 
quote  in  anticipation.  "Early  this  night  to  my  roof," 
it  runs,  "the  heavens  being  bare  of  clouds  (ccelo 
aperto).  Set  myself  to  measure  the  elevation  of 
Sagittarius  Alpha  with  my  new  astrolabe  sent  me  by 
my  friend  and  master,  Hafiz,  from  out  Arabia.  Did 
this  night  compute  the  equation  a=g|f(a,  b  c  Ts). 
Thus  did  I  prove  the  variations  of  the  ellipse  and 


THROUGH  THE  SCUTTLE  WITH  THE  TINMAN 

show  Hassan  Sabah  to  be  the  mule  he  is.  Then 
rested,  pacing  my  roof  even  to  the  rising  of  the  morn 
ing  star,  which  burned  red  above  the  Sultan's  turret. 
To  bed,  satisfied  with  this  night." 

Northern  literature  has  never  taken  the  roof 
seriously.  There  have  been  many  books  written  from 
the  viewpoint  of  windows.  The  study  window  is 
usual.  Then  there  is  the  college  window  and  the 
Thrums  window.  Also  there  is  a  window  viewpoint 
as  yet  scarcely  expressed;  that  of  the  boy  of  Steven 
son's  poems  with  his  nose  flattened  against  the 
glass — convalescence  looking  for  sailormen  with  one 
leg.  What  is  "Un  Philosophe  sous  les  Toits"  but 
a  garret  and  its  prospect?  But  does  Souvestre  ever 
go  up  on  the  roof?  He  contents  himself  with  open 
ing  his  casement  and  feeding  crumbs  to  the  birds. 
Not  once  does  he  climb  out  and  scramble  around  the 
mansard.  On  wintry  nights  neither  his  legs  nor 
thoughts  join  the  windy  devils  that  play  tempest 
overhead.  Then  again,  from  Westminster  bridges, 
from  country  lanes,  from  crowded  streets,  from  ships 
at  sea,  and  mountain  tops  have  sonnets  been  thrown 
to  the  moon ;  not  once  from  the  roof. 

Is  not  this  neglect  of  the  roof  the  chief  reason  why 
we  Northerners  fear  the  night?  When  darkness  is 
concerned,  the  cowardice  of  our  poetry  is  notorious. 
It  skulks,  so  to  speak,  when  beyond  the  glare  of  the 

— — — _____  133 


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


street  lights.  I  propound  it  as  a  question  for 
scholars. 

'Tis  now  the  very  witching  time  of  night, 

When  churchyards  yawn  and  hell  itself  breathes  out 

Contagion  to  this  world. 

Why  is  the  night  conceived  as  the  time  for  the  bogey 
to  be  abroad? — an 

.  .  .  evil  thing  that  walks  by  night, 
In  fog  or  fire,  by  lake  or  moorish  fen, 
Blue  meager  hag,  or  stubborn  unlaid  ghost 
That  breaks  his  magic  chains  at  curfew  time. 

Why  does  not  this  slender,  cerulean  dame  keep 
normal  hours  and  get  sleepy  after  dinner  with  the 
rest  of  us — and  so  to  bed?  Such  a  baneful  thing  is 
night,  "hideous,"  reeking  with  cold  shivers  and  gloom, 
from  which  morning  alone  gives  relief. 

Pack,  clouds,  away!  and  welcome,  day! 
With  night  we  banish  sorrow. 

Day  is  jocund  that  stands  on  the  misty  mountain 
tops. 

But  we  cannot  expect  the  night  to  be  friendly  and 
wag  its  tail  when  we  slam  against  it  our  doors  and, 
until  lately,  our  windows.  Naturally  it  takes  to 
ghoulishness.  It  was  in  the  South  where  the  roofs 
are  flat  and  men  sleep  as  friends  with  the  night  that 

_ — _______  134 


THROUGH  THE  SCUTTLE  WITH  THE  TINMAN 

it  was  written,  "The  heavens  declare  the  glory  of 
God:  and  the  firmament  showeth  his  handiwork." 

I  get  full  of  my  subject  as  I  write  and  a  kind  of 
rage  comes  over  me  as  I  think  of  the  wrongs  the  roof 
has  suffered.  It  is  the  only  part  of  the  house  that 
has  not  kept  pace  with  the  times.  To  say  that  you 
have  a  good  roof  is  taken  as  meaning  that  your  roof 
is  tight,  that  it  keeps  out  the  water,  that  it  excels  in 
those  qualities  in  which  it  excelled  equally  three  thou 
sand  years  ago.  What  you  ought  to  mean  is  that 
you  have  a  roof  that  is  flat  and  has  things  on  it  that 
make  it  livable,  where  you  can  walk,  disport  yourself, 
or  sleep ;  a  house-top  view  of  your  neighbors'  affairs ; 
an  airy  pleasance  with  a  full  sweep  of  stars;  a  place 
to  listen  of  nights  to  the  drone  of  the  city;  a 
place  of  observation,  and  if  you  are  so  inclined,  of 
meditation. 

Everything  but  the  roof  has  been  improved.  The 
basement  has  been  coddled  with  electric  lights  until 
a  coal  hole  is  no  longer  an  abode  of  mystery.  Even 
the  garret,  that  used  to  be  but  a  dusty  suburb  of  the 
house  and  lumber  room  for  early  Victorian  furniture, 
has  been  plastered  and  strewn  with  servants'  bed 
rooms. 

There  was  a  garret  once:  somewhat  misty  now  after 
these  twenty  years.  It  was  not  daubed  to  respecta 
bility  with  paint,  nor  was  it  furnished  forth  as  bed- 

1  135  « 


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


rooms;  but  it  was  rough-timbered,  and  resounded 
with  drops  when  the  dark  clouds  passed  above.  On 
bright  days  a  cheerful  light  lay  along  the  floor  and 
dust  motes  danced  in  its  luminous  shaft.  And 
always  there  was  cobwebbed  stillness.  But  on  dark 
days,  when  the  roof  pattered  and  the  branches  of 
trees  scratched  the  shingles  and  when  windows 
rattled,  a  deeper  obscurity  crept  out  of  the  corners. 
Yet  was  there  little  fear  in  the  place.  This  was  the 
front  garret  where  the  theatre  was,  with  the  practi 
cable  curtain.  But  when  the  darker  mood  was  on 
us,  there  was  the  back  garret.  It  was  six  steps  lower 
and  over  it  the  roof  crouched  as  if  to  hide  its  secrets. 
The  very  men  that  built  it  must  have  been  lowering, 
bearded  fellows;  for  they  put  into  it  many  corners 
and  niches  and  black  holes.  The  wood,  too,  from 
which  it  was  fashioned  must  have  been  gnarled  and 
knotted  and  the  nails  rusty  and  crooked.  One  win 
dow  cast  a  narrow  light  down  the  middle  of  this 
room,  but  at  both  sides  was  immeasurable  night. 
When  you  had  stooped  in  from  the  sunlight  and  had 
accustomed  your  eyes  to  the  dimness,  you  found  your 
self  in  an  uncertain  anchorage  of  old  furniture, 
abandoned  but  offering  dusty  covert  for  boys  with 
the  light  of  brigands  in  their  eyes.  A  pirates'  den 
lay  safe  behind  the  chimney,  protected  by  a  bristling 
thicket  of  chairs  and  table  legs,  to  be  approached 


THROUGH  THE  SCUTTLE  WITH  THE  TINMAN 

only  on  hands  and  knees  after  divers  rappings.  And 
back  there  in  the  dark  were  strange  boxes — strange 
boxes,  stout  and  securely  nailed.  But  the  garret  has 
gone. 

Whither  have  the  pirates  fled?  Maybe  some  rumor 
of  the  great  change  reached  them  in  their  fastnesses; 
and  then  in  the  light  of  early  dawn,  in  single  file  they 
climbed  the  ladder,  up  through  the  scuttle.  And 
straddling  the  ridgepole  with  daggers  between  their 
teeth,  alas,  they  became  dizzy  and  toppled  down  the 
steep  shingles  to  the  gutter,  to  be  whirled  away  in  the 
torrent  of  an  April  shower.  Ah  me!  Had  only  the 
roof  been  flat!  Then  it  would  have  been  for  them  a 
reservation  where  they  might  have  lived  on  and 
waited  for  the  sound  of  children's  feet  to  come  again. 
Then  when  those  feet  had  come  and  the  old  life  had 
returned,  then  from  aloft  you  would  hear  the  old  cry 
of  Ship-ahoy,  and  you  would  know  that  at  last  your 
house  had  again  slipped  its  moorings  and  was  off  to 
Madagascar  or  the  Straits. 

Where  shall  we  adventure,  to-day  that  we're  afloat, 
Wary  of  the  weather  and  steering  by  a  star  ? 
Shall  it  be  to  Africa,  asteering  of  the  boat, 
To  Providence,  or  Babylon,  or  off  to  Malabar? 

So  a  roof  must  be  more  than  a  cover.  The  roof  of 
a  boat,  its  deck,  is  arranged  for  occupation  and  is  its 

137  


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


best  part.  Consider  the  omnibus!  Even  it  has  seats 
on  top,  the  best  seats  in  fine  weather.  When  Martin 
Chuzzlewit  went  up  to  London  it  was  on  the  top  of 
the  coach  he  sat.  Pickwick  betook  himself,  gaiters, 
small-clothes,  and  all,  to  the  roof.  Even  the  immacu 
late  Rollo  scorned  the  inside  seats.  He  sat  on  top, 
you  may  remember,  and  sucked  oranges  to  ward  off 
malaria,  he  and  that  prince  of  roisterers,  Uncle 
George.  De  Quincey  is  the  authority  on  mail  coaches 
and  for  the  roof  seats  he  is  all  fire  and  enthusiasm. 
It  happened  once,  to  continue  with  De  Quincey,  that 
a  state  coach  was  presented  by  His  Majesty  George 
the  Third  of  England,  as  a  gift  to  the  Chinese 
Emperor.  This  kind  of  vehicle  being  unknown  in 
Peking,  "it  became  necessary  to  call  a  cabinet  council 
on  the  grand  state  question,  'Where  was  the  Emperor 
to  sit?'  The  hammer  cloth  happened  to  be  unusually 
gorgeous ;  and  partly  on  that  consideration,  but  partly 
also  because  the  box  offered  the  most  elevated  seat, 
was  nearest  the  moon,  and  undeniably  went  foremost, 
it  was  resolved  by  acclamation  that  the  box  was  the 
Imperial  throne,  and  for  the  scoundrel  who  drove, 
he  could  sit  where  he  could  find  a  perch." 

Consider  that  the  summer  day  has  ended  and  that 
you  are  tired  with  its  rush  and  heat.  Up  you  must 
climb  to  your  house-roof.  On  the  rim  of  the  sky  is 
the  blurred  light  from  the  steel  furnaces  at  the  city's 

138  ———-——-—--—--—- 


THROUGH  THE  SCUTTLE  WITH  THE  TINMAN 

edge  and,  paneling  this,  stands  a  line  of  poplars 
stirring  and  sounding  in  the  night  wind. 

Alone  upon  the  house-top  to  the  North 

I  turn  and  watch  the  lightnings  in  the  sky. 

Is  it  fanciful  to  think  that  into  the  mind  comes  a  little 
of  the  beauty  of  the  older  world  when  roofs  were  flat 
and  men  meditated  under  the  stars  and  saw  visions 
in  the  night? 

Once  upon  a  time  I  crossed  the  city  of  Nuremberg 
after  dark;  the  market  cleared  of  all  traces  of  its 
morning  sale,  the  "Schoner  Brunnen"  at  its  edge,  the 
narrow  defile  leading  to  the  citadel,  the  climb  at  the 
top.  And  then  I  came  to  an  open  parade  above  the 
town — "except  the  Schlosskirche  Weathercock  no 
biped  stands  so  high."  The  night  had  swept  away 
all  details  of  buildings.  Nuremberg  lay  below  like 
a  dark  etching,  the  centuries  folded  and  creased  in 
its  obscurities.  Then  from  some  gaunt  tower  came 
a  peal  of  bells,  the  hour  maybe,  and  then  an  answering 
peal.  "Thus  stands  the  night,"  they  said;  "thus  stand 
the  stars."  I  was  in  the  presence  of  Time  and  its 
black  wings  were  brushing  past  me.  What  star  was 
in  the  ascendant,  I  knew  not.  And  yet  in  me  I  felt 
a  throb  that  came  by  blind,  circuitous  ways  from  some 
far-off  Chaldean  temple,  seven-storied  in  the  night. 
In  me  was  the  blood  of  the  star-gazer,  my  emotions 

"  139  •    • 


JOURNEYS  TO  BAGDAD 


recalling  the  rejected  beliefs,  the  signs  and  wonders 
of  the  heavens.  The  waves  of  old  thought  had  but 
lately  receded  from  the  world;  and  I,  but  a  chink  and 
hollow  on  the  beach,  had  caught  my  drop  of  the 
ebbing  ocean. 


140 


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